CAMERON Norrie paid tribute to his team-mates and the Glaswegian crowd for helping him end his rollercoaster homecoming weekend on a high. Playing in the city of his dad David’s birth for the first time, his father having made the 30-hour flight from the family home in Auckland to see him in action, the 23-year-old’s home debut fell flat on Friday night as he was unable to capitalise on a match point before succumbing to Jurabek Karimov in five sets. But his misery was transformed to happiness yesterday when he held his nerve to secure the winning point in this World Group play-off tie against Uzbekistan with a 6-2, 6-2, 6-0 win against Sanjar Fayziev. His task, admittedly, became significantly easier in late morning with the news of Denis Istomin’s withdrawal with an ankle injury but Norrie successfully banished thoughts of his ordeal on Friday and the outcome of this tie was never in doubt. By the end, as he raced through that final set, he could almost enjoy it. “I am extremely proud,” Norrie said afterwards. “All in all, today was pretty different from Friday. I was expecting to play Istomin and I felt like I wanted to prove something to myself and everyone that I could turn it around. But then I found out they had changed the line-up at the last minute.

“I’d like to thank the crowd and say thanks to my dad for staying put in his seat, because he was a bit nervous on Friday,” added the 23-year-old, responsible for one of the most memorable Davis Cup debuts of all time, when he overcame Roberto Bautista-Agut in Marbellla. “He’s generally pretty relaxed. Obviously he was disappointed on Friday night, I was disappointed, but the team were really positive. The guy [Karimov] played unbelievable, it wasn’t like I played a bad match. I was maybe 6 out of 10 but he came up clutch. But the team got me ready for this next one and I came up strong.

“I was pretty nervous coming into the tie but the crowd got me through it. The result speaks for itself but I am happy with how I handled everything and got better as the match went on. I’m just really happy with how I closed out the match, while on Friday I let the guy back in a little bit and he got more confidence.”

While it was Norrie’s misfortune to encounter a young man in Karimov on Friday night whom we may hear plenty about in future, the same can’t quite be said for Fayziev. Istomin’s doubles partner from Saturday has made it to the age of 24 without winning a Tour level match in singles. That included six previous attempts in the Davis Cup, all of which ended in failure.

If it made the occasion somewhat anti-climactic, that certainly wasn’t how Norrie was looking at it. He had some major demons to exorcise here but whiling away the hours with his team-mates playing a game called Corn Hole in the team hotel had helped calm the nerves as much as possible. While the Johannesburg-born, Auckland-raised player’s serve was broken cheaply in the very first game of the match, and many games in those opening two sets went to deuce, it didn’t take long for him to get his groove back.

“I am pretty used to all this kind of stuff coming from college tennis [in the USA] but my first real taste was Spain and I couldn’t believe some of the moments I was having in that atmosphere,” he said. “Coming here and playing an indoor tie is an incredible experience and it really does help having home advantage. It is pretty lonely out there on the tour, you are by yourself or with one coach all year round, so when you come here as a team it has been a great week. Everyone has been really sociable, and we have had loads of really good laughs

“He will have learned a lot on Friday,” said captain Leon Smith. “It is a huge amount of pressure to come in and play and to come back and do what he has done a lot of credit to Cam.”