Irish Davis Cup team aiming for the summit at the foot of the Andes

More than a few of Irish sport’s great days have been against-the-odds stories written in distant corners of the globe and the country’s Davis Cup team will look to add another chapter to that book in Peru in the coming days.

Secure a win against their hosts at the Estadio Asia in their World Group I playoff tie and it will propel the team to a level of tennis that hasn’t been graced by an Irish men’s team since the early days of the 1980s.

Momentum is on their side having claimed successive promotions up from Division IV in recent years but this trip to the foot of the Andes makes for a particularly steep climb for a smaller than usual travelling party.

Peru has been engulfed in civil unrest for months now with dozens of people killed and states of emergency declared in various areas but discussions about a possible postponement and change of venue have come and gone.

The Irish team that arrived earlier in the week touched down without non-playing team captain Conor Niland, assistant coach Stephen Nugent, the team’s regular physio and with only four players as opposed to five plus reserve.

Cian Blake, Tennis Ireland’s performance director for the Munster region, has stepped into Niland’s shoes with the tie to be played on a red clay court surface and in conditions that the hosts believe will shift the scales even further in their direction.

Not ideal then but the experience so far has been uneventful with the visitors afforded a police escort on the two-and-a-half hour drive from Lima down the coast to their base in Asia on the Pacific Ocean.

“We didn’t run into any trouble, didn’t even see anything outside of the van,” said Ireland No.1 Simon Carr who has Osgar O’hOisin, Michael Agwi and Jack Molloy for company for a tie that starts on Friday and finishes on Saturday.

“It was more the trip down and the initial getting out of the city of Lima was the concern at the start for anyone but there has been absolutely no problems at all. We wouldn’t have even thought there was anything happening.” 

The Peruvians have erected seating that will take somewhere in the region of 1,500-2,000 spectators, and the word is they are expecting it to be 80% filled, but Carr is adamant Ireland will lean into that atmosphere rather than be cowed by it.

The task facing them on the court is considerable.

There are 12 World Group I playoffs this weekend with a dozen seeded teams and Peru are ranked seventh. Their No.1, Juan Pablo Varillas, is ranked 94th in the singles ranking while Carr, who has endured two years of injury issues, is 644 places back.

It has already been a significant week for the sport here with Kevin Quinn being named as Tennis Ireland’s new CEO but a win in South America would be an enormous step forward given the level of opposition and the circumstances.

Manage that and the win would open up the door to a possible home World Group I tie later in the year. That’s the tier just below the game’s elite nations and it’s a pool in which Ireland hasn’t kicked its legs in a long, long time.

That they are already swimming in deeper waters is evidenced by the fact that Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece and Denmark’s Holger Rune, both of them top-ten players, are competing in other Group I playoffs in the coming days.

The sight of either one in Dublin would be something else.

“It would be massive to have them in Ireland,” said Carr.