From the LTA website:

British doubles’ player Ken Skupski blogs from the AEGON Team GB Davis Cup in Lithuania, and discusses the last four weeks on the road.

Since Australia, we’ve literally traveled round the world again, but in the opposite direction. We came home, had a few days off, and then we had a four-week block of tournaments. First stop as Zagreb, and the set-up of the tournament wasn’t great, the practice courts were minimal, at a different site, different court surface, and we played the No.1 seeds first round, Cermak and Mertinak, which was tough, in front of about 10 people, so there was no real atmosphere in a massive arena. Colin played pretty well, I was pretty poor, I had a bad day.

And then we moved from there, came home for a day, and headed to San Francisco where we played in San Jose down the road. It was a good place, I would defeinitley go back, but same again, different courts, different surface, different venue for the practice site and the main site. We played the Bryans first round, another tough draw, and we didn’t go in with the most confidence. They took it from point 1, when they get on a roll it’s tough because it’s hard to break that mould, they gave us a lesson which we learned from, and realised what we need to do to get better. They really were at their best, because they’d just come off winning the Aussie Open.

We had a nightmare with one of the airlines on the way home. We were meant to fly back on the Wednesday, had our flights changed, and were meant to pay for the tickets at the airport. We got there, and were told we weren’t able to pay for our tickets because they didn’t have the facility for it at the airport. So they put us up in a hotel, we had to wait 24 hours, so we were fuming. Our plans were to get back as soon as possible because of the time change, so in the end we didn’t get back till the Friday morning and had to leave the next day to go to Marseille, where we played again on the Monday. We played Mahut/Clement, packed stadium, great match, both of us played well, we weren’t the better team, but we gave ourselves more chances and we ended up losing the match, which is difficult to take.

On the other hand it was a very positive match considering everything that had gone on, we’d dealt with the situation quite well. So another early exit, which took us back to the States. We went out with our coach Louis to Delray, that was a smooth flight, and played a very good match. Sadly it was against two big servers, Taylor Dent and Ryan Harrison, and there weren’t many rallies, and came down to one point here, one point there. That’s where the confidence that comes from winning matches makes a difference. When you’re winning matches, for some reason you win the big points when it matters, but when you’re on a bad run, without even doing anything wrong it sometimes just gets away from you and you don’t know why.

But we’re not getting down on ourselves, and Davis Cup was a great thing to look forward to. I’m getting to represent my country which is the best honour you can have. I’d like to do it more often, but obviously we need to win this first one.

It’s an unusual event, players can definitely play above their level, but I feel if we can go in there, take care of business, do the right things, support each other, and use the crowd that’s coming over to watch us, we’re definitely confident. We don’t lack confidence in our own ability, it’s just at the moment we’re not running smoothly. But in this match it’s five sets, we don’t have to worry if we lose a few points, this match is going to be the best team that will win, and we feel like we can go out there and get our season back on track, and get the win for the team. It’s been tough in the past few years for all British players, so if we can go out there and get a win it will be really good. We just want to give it our best shot.

I did look at some pictures of Vilnius before we got here, it’s actually the first snow I’ve seen this year because I missed all the English stuff! That said, I probably won’t go exploring because I don’t know the language, and you don’t know what’s out there! The first day we got here, we were in the bus from the airport, and two guys must have thought it was a taxi because they tried to get in! The driver was telling them to get out, but the guys kept on coming trying to get in, and the bus was full of us! He could have had a gun, you never know!

The quality of the food and facilities though has been really, really good. I thought we might get some obscure meals, but it’s been absolutely fantastic so far. The only thing is that a few of the meals have gone on a little too long in the evening, two or three hours for the food to arrive, which is a little bit long. But everyone is in high spirits.

All these air miles do mean that I have seen quite a few films recently. I went with John and Colin and Jamie to see Edge of Darkness, a Mel Gibson film, and Law Abiding Citizen, Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. The last couple of nights we’ve watched a TV drama on Sky altogether, about an 80s drugs baron, quite gory, quite explicit, definitely a guys’ type of thing! It was very good, everybody watched it together.