This morning we wrote that Ben Shelton had chosen to fly to Prague and play Davis Cup five days after the biggest match of his life, that the calendar had four owners and none of them talked, and that a column headlined “Ben Shelton Should Skip Davis Cup and Laver Cup” was published as the tie started. By the time the column had been up for a few hours, Shelton had walked onto the indoor hard court at the O2 Arena, lost 6-4, 6-4 to Jiří Lehečka in one hour and thirty-two minutes, and stood at a microphone to explain it.

“He outplayed me today. He served great. Returned great. Volleyed really well. Played well from the baseline. There was no real holes in his game today, and he definitely deserved to win that match.”

That is the whole match, from the man who lost it. It is also — read it again — a list of the four things a tennis player does, delivered by someone who had done all four at a Grand Slam final on Sunday and none of them on Friday. Lehečka broke him early in both sets. Shelton had two break points in the second, at 1-2, and missed a leaping smash on the second one. Lehečka closed it on his third match point with a service winner down the T, to “roars from the vocal Czech fans,” and afterward said he had “never ever had support like that. It’s an experience for a lifetime.”

The Other American

The strange part of the day is that the argument for skipping it was made by the man who lost, and the argument for coming was made by the man nobody expected to win.

Learner Tien — twenty years old, making his Davis Cup debut, the replacement for a replacement after Fritz and Paul withdrew — opened the tie against Jakub Menšík and beat him 6-2, 6-4. It was Tien’s third win over Menšík in three meetings and his second this month; the first was the US Open third-rounder where the crowd chanted the hecklers out of Louis Armstrong. Menšík made 34 unforced errors, nineteen more than Tien. In Prague, in front of his own crowd, in the match his team needed him to win, the Czech No. 2 played worse than he had in New York with people screaming at him.

Tien: “I knew I was playing the first match. I really wanted to set the tone for my team. I came out playing really focused.” And, on the shirt: “It feels even better that I can do it representing my country. For me, it’s my first time playing Davis Cup, but I love being part of the team.”

He set the tone. Then the tone changed.

The Captain

Bob Bryan, the American captain, did the captain’s job, which is to say the thing that keeps a locker room upright:

“Lehečka was red-hot today and served well when he needed to. Really, we’re in good position going into Day 2.”

He is, technically, right. It is 1-1. Saturday is the doubles — Harrison and Krajicek against Pavlásek and Rikl, and the Americans brought two doubles specialists for exactly this — followed by the reverse singles: Shelton against Menšík, then Tien against Lehečka. If the doubles goes the way the doubles is supposed to go, the United States needs one of its two singles players to win one match, and one of those players is the US Open finalist against a man Tien just beat comfortably.

That is the good position. The less good position is that the US Open finalist has now played 54 tour-level matches this year, lost the last two, and looked in Prague like someone whose body was still somewhere over the Atlantic. “Deserved to win” is a generous thing to say. It is also what you say when you did not have anything left to say it with.

Elsewhere

Holger Rune, eleven months after tearing an Achilles, came back for Denmark against Bulgaria and beat Iliyan Radulov 6-3, 6-3. Grigor Dimitrov had earlier beaten Elmer Møller in three to level that tie at 1-1, and the two former top-fives are lined up to play each other on Saturday, which is the best match of the weekend and is happening in a tie nobody was watching. South Korea leads India 2-0 in Seoul.

And in Prague, on Saturday afternoon, the argument about the calendar will be settled for at least a week. Either Shelton beats Menšík and the trip was worth it, or he does not and the column was right, and there will not be a third reading. He has been through a fifth-set tiebreak at 3:33 in the morning, a semifinal, a final, a transatlantic flight, and a straight-sets loss to a man playing the match of his life in front of his own country. Now he gets a day of doubles to sit and watch.

It is the first day off he has had since August.

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