The claycourt season is here and where better to start than in stunning Monte Carlo?
Brilliant
Croatia's top players might do well to remember that after they were drawn to face Great Britain in September's World Group play-off.
With the exception of Switzerland and Spain, I would fancy Great Britain to have a decent chance of beating any of the teams in the draw with Murray back on board.
You'd always back Murray to win his two singles and 'Murray plus one' would always be in with a shout of winning the doubles too unless they came up against an established pairing like the Bryans.
It will be fascinating to see what surface Croatia choose to stage the tie on. Personally, I think they'd be mad to play on anything but clay.
Given that the tie will take place four days after the US Open final, which Murray could be in, anything else would seem illogical but they've shown an overwhelming preference to play indoors in recent years so we'll just have to see.
The manner of Great Britain's victory over Russia was nothing short of brilliant and all credit to the team for coming back when they seemed down and out.
Bad
Yet I must admit that I wasn't comfortable with Dan Evans being on the team. His comments after his singles defeat to Dmitry Tursunov made my point for me.
"I don't train hard enough and don't work hard enough day in and day out," he said. "I'm obviously pretty bad at my job. It's up to me, it's not up to anyone else."
I couldn't have put it any better.
For too long now Great Britain has been guilty of looking short-term rather than setting up the right culture and choosing the right people to help the younger players so that they know what is expected of them as they come through.
We always fall into the trap of saying 'that's all we've got, so that's who we will pick'.
Evans is a talented player but I feel he is wasting his talent and that makes me fear for the next crop of juniors who are struggling to make the next half-step up.
The exception is Kyle Edmund, who is very switched on. Everything I hear about him is very positive. I think he is one of those guys who will fulfil his potential.
No-one ever knows exactly how far they can go - any coach who tells you otherwise is just guessing.
All that is required of any player is to put in an honest day's work and I believe Evans hasn't done that enough, which is why his ranking has gone backwards.
Hopefully the penny will drop after the events of the last week and he will capitalise on what was a fine effort in the singles.
