A narrow doubles defeat proved decisive as Ireland were edged out 3-2 by Syria in their Davis Cup II tie in University of Limerick this afternoon.
With the teams tied at one win apiece overnight, the match was very much in the balance with much likely to hang on the opening doubles.
Ireland opted for youth, giving Charlie Barry his debut alongside Conor Gannon, who had featured in the match against China in Dublin last September.
Both finished their time at US Colleges relatively recently and for Barry it was a first taste of Davis Cup, and in his home city to boot.
Nerves? What nerves? In front of another hugely supportive crowd - albeit slightly down on yesterday's attendanc - they raced into a 5-0 lead and took the opening set 6-1.
Not unsurprisingly, Syria chose to pair their two experienced singles players in the doubles and they fought back.
Gannon was broken in the fourth game of the second set and it turned out to be the final break of the match.
Syria took the set 6-3, whilst the only two break points in the third set (and they were in fact match points) came when Ireland led 5-4 but they couldn’t convert either and the decider went to a tie-break.
Each team started that with a double fault but it was on serve thereafter before a superb return off a Gannon second serve tilted things the Syrians' way, the visitors winning the tie-break 7-5.
This meant that Michael Agwi had to topple Taym Al Azmeh in the first of the day’s singles matches.
But after two months of inactivity due to injury, Agwi put in another error-prone display as he fell to a 6-1 6-4 loss in barely over an hour, sealing the match for Syria.
In the remaining dead-rubber match, Ireland's Ammar Elamin defeated Yacoub Makzoume 6-3 6-2.
