Impressive victories over Portugal, Holland, Israel, and Austria in the Fed Cup Euro/Africa Zone Group I event in February,  under the guidance of captain Judy Murray, has seen women's tennis in Britain rise to as high a level as it has been since Virginia Wade graced the courts in the 70s.

For the first time since 1993, Britain’s Fed Cup team has a chance to make it to the World Group stage.

And, although modest over her role in Britain’s success, the reversal in fortunes has most certainly been down to the hard work the woman from Dunblane has devoted to the task in hand.

“I was given the opportunity to captain the Fed Cup team at the end of November and by the time all the agreements were in place, it was getting into December,”explained Judy.

“This didn’t give me an awful lot of time to get to know the girls or the WTA tour before the first tie in Israel in February.

“In order to do the job as well as I possibly could, I left Scotland just after Christmas and went to Auckland and Hobart [Tasmania] to see the WTA events there with some of the girls from team GB.

"After that, I went onto the Australian Open so I was able to watch them play a decent number of matches. This also helped me get to know the women’s tour better too, because all my experience was in the juniors, ITF circuit and the men’s game.

"After my first Fed Cup tie as captain, I had actually been away from home for around five weeks. It was well worth it, though, and it was absolutely the right thing to do in order to win.”

Murray and her team will now take on Sweden in the Fed Cup World Group II play-offs on April 21st - 22nd. And, with the possibility of facing France, Switzerland, Sweden, or Argentina, the British tennis coach admits the draw could have been a lot more difficult.

She said: “With the distance to travel and the conditions over there, it would have been a lot tougher to coordinate and adjust to a match against Argentina, for example.

“Whoever we drew, though, represented a great opportunity for the girls to get into a play-off to get into the World Group, which is the top 16 teams in the world –our ranking in Fed Cup has recently gone up to 20 after coming through the matches in Israel.”

While Judy concedes Britain could have faced a tougher time of it, she is disappointed their encounter with the Scandinavians is not a home one.

“We would very much have liked to have a home tie, simply because there hasn’t been a home match in the Fed Cup in many, many years now [19 years]. It would have been a great opportunity to showcase British women’s tennis. It would have also been great for the fans to be able to come out and support the four top women in British tennis.”

In the men’s equivalent to the Fed Cup –the Davis Cup –Braehead Arena in Glasgow has hosted the last five ties, each attracting bumper crowds and the mother to stars Andy and Jamie is convinced the unequivocal support would make the transition to the Fed Cup.

“There’s a lot of interest from British tennis fans to support the girls," she said.

“There’s excitement about British women’s tennis at the moment. We’ve got the two older players –Elena Baltacha and Anne Keothavong –who are playing the best tennis of their careers right now.

“Then we’ve got the two youngsters –Laura Robson and Heather Watson –who are both former junior Grand Slam champions and who are both ranked around the 100s.

"The youngsters are very exciting to watch and both are very different from each other in terms of the way they play. They are both very bubbly, fun personalities and they bring a lot of energy to the team.”

Having defeated the in-form Poland, including world number four Agnieszka Radwanska, in the round one play-off stages, Sweden will be Judy and her teams’ toughest challenge yet.  

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