Great Britain let an early lead slip when Alex Bogdanovic was beaten by Noam Okum to leave the Davis Cup tie in Israel level at 1-1 after day one.
Greg Rusedski gave Britain the perfect start with a 6-4 6-3 6-0 win over Harel Levy in the opening rubber of the Euro-African Zone clash in Tel Aviv.
Bogdanovic started well against Okun in the second singles but wasted four set points before losing 7-6 (7-3) 6-2 6-2.
Andrew Murray partners fellow debutant David Sherwood in Saturday's doubles.
Murray, 17, will become Britain's youngest Davis Cup player when the pair take on Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram, unless GB captain Jeremy Bates decides to draft in Rusedski.
"I have phenomenal belief in Alex and I believe he could have won that match"
With Tim Henman absent following his decision to quit the Davis Cup team, Bates was relying on Rusedski to make a winning start in the opening singles.
He let an early 3-0 lead slip in windy conditions against world number 256 Levy, but upped the pressure in game 10 and broke to love.
An immediate break in the second set gave Rusedski his fourth straight game and he raced clear of an increasingly irate Levy, who continually questioned line calls.
If anything, the complaints affected Levy more and his game disintegrated as Rusedski powered on to a comfortable win.
"I'm really pleased, it was difficult conditions so to win in straight sets is always nice," Rusedski told BBC Sport.
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"I've got a lot of experience and in the third set I started to play really well."
Things looked even better for the visitors when Bogdanovic moved 5-2 up against Okun but the Briton was then struck by nerves.
Four set points went begging as he dropped serve twice and, despite breaking back, he was overrun in the tie-break.
Okun, ranked just 20 places higher at 153 in the world, then surged away from Bogdanovic to leave the tie very much in the balance.
Bogdanovic admitted: "I didn't really take my chances today and he managed to turn the match around. I think if I had won the first set it would have been a different story.
Game by game:
"I definitely think I can improve a lot on this one. I've got to go back and learn what I didn't do well.
"It was my second Davis Cup match and it was tough at times but it was a great lesson out there. You can only get better from here and you are going to learn from stuff like this."
Team captain Bates defended Bogdanovic afterwards, pointing out that he lost to a higher-ranked player in Okun.
"I have phenomenal belief in Alex and I believe he could have won that match but it's a five-set match, and over three hours matches do go up and down," Bates told BBC Five Live.
"It's always disappointing to lose but realistically it's where we expected to be."