Ireland, and specifically debutant number one Peter Clarke, were rudely awakened when the opening shots were traded in the Davis Cup tie with Luxembourg on slow clay at the Mondorf Les Bains club yesterday.
The strongly fancied Irish team had to be satisfied with a share of the singles following Clarke's defeat and this means that the Euro-African tie will, contrary to all predictions, remain live tomorrow.
The difficult fly in the ointment for Pete Lowther's side was a junior player and star prospect Gilles Mullar who will not be celebrating his 17th birthday until next month.
Mullar, who has no senior ranking, proved too strong for Clarke, the Dublin born 19-year-old, who has lived most of his life in Australia, but who declared for his native country a few months ago.
He lost the three demanding sets 4-6 5-7 5-7 and generally had problems with Mullar's consistent serves and the precocious play of the youngster.
The match took two hours to complete and Clarke's task was clearly set when he dropped the first set. The Irish man failed to clinch the second set despite having four set points.
The pressure mounted for Clarke and, to his credit, he saved three match points before succumbing. Team captain Pete Lowther will play Barron and Owen Casey in today's doubles.
Earlier, Scott Barron turned in a razor sharp display to beat Luxembourg's only ranked player Mike Scheidweiler a 19-year-old ranked at 841. Barron closed down the match in just under two hours, 6-3 6-4 6-4.
Today's doubles will be crucial for, on the evidence of the opening singles play, the side holding the advantage going into tomorrow's reverse singles would have to be favoured to win out.
Under the new rule Lowther will be at liberty to play any two of his four players in the reverse rubbers.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)