There is no need to reach for the record books just yet, but the manner of the world No 1’s 15th straight triumph, a 4-6, 6-1, 6-1 victory over Caroline Garcia that propelled Poland into the final of the United Cup, suggested she will take some stopping when the Australian Open gets underway in a week’s time. It was not so much Swiatek’s level over the final two sets that stood out, impressive though that undoubtedly was, but the mental steel she exhibited to turn around a contest that at one stage seemed to be slipping away. 

After navigating a difficult hold at the start of the second set, frustration began to creep into the 22-year-old’s play. A missed pass drew an angry swish of the racket. Even a successful approach shot was greeted with a perceptible shrug of exasperation, Swiatek having directed her forehand straight back to Garcia with the court at her mercy. When she then nudged an inviting short ball wide, Tomasz Wiktorowski, her coach and the Polish team captain, was sufficiently concerned to rise from his courtside seat and urge her on with an enthusiastic burst of applause.

The reasons for Swiatek’s irritation were plain. A habitual frontrunner, she had won seven of the afternoon’s first eight points only to be denied an early break by a combination of her own mistakes and the quality of Garcia’s bold, first-strike tennis. The manner in which the 20th-ranked Frenchwoman went on to take the lead in the seventh game, creating her first break point of the contest with a horribly mishit winner, then converting it with a searing return to the Pole’s feet, doubtless did little to improve Swiatek’s mood.

So with Garcia a set to the good and serving at 0-1, 40-15, and Swiatek’s fuse gently burning down, the signs were not encouraging for Poland. Sensing as much, the sizeable Polish contingent in the crowd sought to raise her spirits. As chants of “Iga!” rained down, Swiatek bounced on the spot, pulled her cap down low, and set about turning the tide. Garcia overcooked a forehand, Swiatek treated the Frenchwoman to taste of her own medicine by drilling a return at her feet, and two searing backhands later the Pole had the break. Garcia would win only two more games.

“Mentally I knew to make a big adjustment because I was impatient, and sometimes I made bad decisions,” said Swiatek. “I needed to focus a little bit more, because I felt like my mind was kind of going elsewhere.

“Sometimes it’s going to click or sometimes not. But you know, it was 6-1, 6-1, so I would say even though I got my level up, it was all these circumstances that led up to that score. 

“I wouldn’t say I switched it and that was it, because I tried to switch it even in the first set. I just needed some time.” 

Following Hubert Hurkacz’s earlier win over Adrian Mannarino, Swiatek’s victory gave Poland an unassailable 2-0 lead. Katarzyna Kawa and Jan Zielinski subsequently combined to defeat Elixane Lechemia and Édouard Roger-Vasselin 6-3, 6-3 in the mixed doubles.

It is all a far cry from last year’s semi-final, when Swiatek suffered a tearful straight-sets defeat at the hands of Jessica Pegula as Poland were routed 5-0 by the USA in the inaugural edition of the mixed-team event. Swiatek was grateful for the extra day’s practice time permitted this year following the journey from Perth, where Wiktorowski’s side played their group matches, and relieved to find less of a discrepancy between the surfaces at the two venues (“much more similar than last year, comparing Brisbane to here”).

In Sunday’s final, Poland will face Germany, for whom Angelique Kerber scored a crucial opening win in a 2-1 victory over Australia. The 35-year-old former world No 1, playing her first event in 18 months after giving birth to her daughter Liana last February, saved two match points to defeat Ajla Tomljanovic 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 (9-7). 

Alex De Minaur levelled the tie for the host nation with a 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 win over Alexander Zverev, ranked five places above the Australian at seventh in the world, before Zverev made amends by partnering Laura Siegemund to a 7-6 (7-2), 6-7 (2-7), 15-13 victory over Matthew Ebden and Storm Hunter in which the German pair saved two match points. 

“I think Poland is the favourite no matter who they play, with Iga and Hubi,” said Zverev, who overcame a bout of cramp late in the climactic mixed doubles. “Iga is basically a cheat code at the United Cup a little bit, or has been so far. Hopefully we can change that tomorrow.”

The post Swiatek passes Garcia test as Poland make United Cup final appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

But that proud record came to an end in Perth, where Alex De Minaur inflicted a 6-4, 6-4 defeat on the 24-time grand slam champion to give Australia the platform for a 3-0 United Cup quarter-final win over Serbia. 

Twelve months after De Minaur was, to use his own word, “embarrassed” by Djokovic in Rod Laver Arena, the world No 12 produced one of the finest performances of his career to win all but one of his 34 first serve points, claiming what he described as a “surreal” result.

Just as he when lost to Chung in 2018, however, Djokovic had to contend not only with an inspired opponent but also a nagging injury. For the elbow problem that culminated with surgery then, read a painful wrist that first showed signs of troubling him in Serbia’s group win over the Czech Republic now. 

Having received treatment on the area during a three-set win over Jiri Lehecka on Tuesday, Djokovic appeared distinctly unimpressed to be denied a medical timeout on the basis that the injury was a pre-existing one. 

“What are you talking about?” the Serb demanded of the physio after sending a forehand long to concede a break in the ninth game. “It’s an injury you treated yesterday. So the logic is that, if it continues getting worse the next day, you won’t treat it because it already occurred yesterday? I said it improved before the match, but the more I’m playing, it’s getting worse.”

The timing of the injury is clearly far from ideal Djokovic, who matched Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24 grand slam titles at last year’s US Open and will be aiming to eclipse it with an 11th success in the stadium bearing her name when the Australian Open gets underway on 14 January. Yet we have been here before with the Serb, who triumphed at Melbourne Park with a torn hamstring last year and also hoisted the trophy in 2021 after tearing an abdominal muscle. Djokovic said he expected to be fit in time to defend his title.  

“I think I’ll be OK, to be honest,” said Djokovic. “It did have quite an impact, particularly on the forehand and serve. But again, I don’t want to be spending too much time talking about it and taking away credit for the victory from De Minaur.

“The [recovery] process is not strange to me. It’s not unusual. I’ve been in this kind of situation so many times and I know what I need to do, along with my team, to get myself ready.  

“[Two out of the last three years I’ve been injured just before Australian Open, and managed to win both Australian Opens. So I hope that I will not be injured this time around. That’s what we’re going to work on, to get my body in the right shape, optimal state, so that I can perform at a high level throughout, hopefully, the entire Australian Open.”

De Minaur sealed the opener with a wrong-footing forehand before holding his nerve down the stretch after Djokovic gifted him a break with a double fault in the seventh game. Pegged back from 40-0 as he served for the win, the Australian finally converted his fourth match point as Djokovic drove a backhand long. Ajla Tomljanovic subsequently defeated Serbia’s Natalija Stevanovic 6-1, 6-1 to give the home team an unassailable lead. 

“It’s hard to put into words,” said De Minaur. “It’s a very good feeling. Everything that could have gone well, went well today. I’m happy that I can say I got a win over the GOAT.”

Poland joined Australia in the last four, Hubert Hurkacz Hurkacz defeating Zhang Zhizhen 6-3, 6-4 before Iga Swiatek recovered from 2-0 down to reel off nine straight games in a 6-2, 6-3 win over China’s Qinwen Zheng. Katarzyna Piter and Jan Zielinski then saw off You Xiaodi and Sun Fajing 6-3, 5-7, 10-7 to complete a 3-0 victory for the Group A winners.

“I feel like I’m playing well and making progress compared to last year,” said Swiatek, who has also notched up convincing wins over Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo and Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil in Perth. “I feel like I have more skills to play on these faster hard courts. 

“Obviously, every tournament is a different story. A grand slam, it’s always a little bit tougher, there’s more pressure. I’m just thinking about finishing this tournament well and we’ll see what’s going to happen in Melbourne.”

The post Defeated Djokovic plays down Australian Open injury fears appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

Inevitably, Frances Tiafoe was first on the scene, wrestling Fritz to the ground before Jessica Pegula, Madison Keys and the rest of the victorious US team could even get a look in. 

“As soon as I won, I turned to the team and I knew everyone was going to run at me,” said Fritz after his 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (8-6) victory over Berrettini. 

“It was great until Frances full speed head-butted me in the face.”

“I’m still a bit concussed to be fair,” chimed in Tiafoe, who went on to douse Fritz in water during his on-court interview with Jim Courier, then joined his team-mates in administering the same treatment to Keys.

Here was a victory built on quality and camaraderie. The US lived up to their status as title favourites with emphatic performances on the court, where they were beaten just twice in 24 matches, and winning chemistry off it. Fired by escape room high jinks, social media banter and deep mutual respect, the Americans created an energy so irresistibly infectious then even the opposition wasn’t immune. 

That much was evident when Berrettini and the watching Tiafoe shared a low-five after the Italian blazed a dazzling running pass beyond the stranded Fritz. For Tennis Australia it was pure gold, a moment that evoked something of the spirit of the Hopman Cup, the mixed team event the governing body controversially abandoned three years ago, and which their latest brainchild has effectively superseded.

“I had a blast these two weeks,” said David Witt, the US captain and coach of Pegula. “It was a lot of fun. A lot of tennis watching, but I had a blast. You guys are so immature, and I love you for it. I feel like I’m at home with my eight kids. This is like the Brady Bunch on something. It’s crazy.”

Beyond all the high spirits and prankery, however, it is too early to declare the United Cup an unmitigated success. Cast the mind back a couple of days, to Iga Swiatek’s evident distress following a 6-2, 6-2 defeat to Pegula, and the prevailing mood was quite different.

“Statement made,” declared the competition’s official Twitter account as Swiatek sat at courtside with a towel over her head, weeping, shaking and gnawing at her fingernails, inconsolable despite the best efforts of Aga Radwanska, the Polish captain, to comfort her. And a statement had indeed been made, although whether it was the one the United Cup’s social media team had in mind is another matter. 

Pegula’s excellence was, of course, beyond dispute. She revelled in the quick conditions, keeping Swiatek at bay with her length, power and consistency to produce the biggest shock – and quite possibly the best performance – of the entire competition. The Polish world No 1 has since withdrawn from next week’s event in Adelaide with a shoulder injury, and only time will tell whether her tears owed more to concern about her fitness ahead of the Australian Open than the pain of defeat. Either way, Pegula’s polished performance must have felt deeply cathartic after the pain Swiatek visited upon her last year in the French and US Open quarter-finals, and the semis of Miami and San Diego.

Yet the decisive nature of the scoreline made a rather different statement, highlighting the structural flaws inherent in the United Cup format. The decision to play the competition across three cities meant that, while Poland were obliged to hotfoot if from Brisbane to Sydney following the completion of a dramatic 3-2 win over Italy on Wednesday, the US team, who were based in Sydney from the outset, could simply put their feet up and reflect on a job well done in their group matches against the Czech Republic and Germany. Neither Pegula nor Swiatek were oblivious to the influence the piecemeal schedule may have had on the outcome.

“Obviously maybe I had a little bit of an advantage,” said Pegula after her win on Friday. “They just flew in yesterday. Definitely the fastest conditions I have played her. Every other place I’ve played her has been pretty slow. I think that favoured me a lot, and I was able to use that to my advantage.”

It was a typically honest and measured assessment by the 28-year-old, particularly after claiming one of the biggest wins of her career – and organisers would do well to pay heed. For all the memorable moments the United Cup has produced – Cameron Norrie securing the finest win of his career against Rafael Nadal, Petra Kvitova’s gutsy group-stage win over Pegula, Stefanos Tsitsipas’s cathartic third-set fightback against Borna Coric, who had won their three previous meetings, to name but a few – player welfare must also be a consideration.

It takes little more than 90 minutes to fly from Brisbane to Sydney, but that is to reckon without delays and the countless time-consuming monotonies familiar to any everyday traveller. Factor in other variables like the need to recover, acclimatise and practise, and the potential influence on results becomes clear. Unbeaten in the group stage, Poland were whitewashed 5-0 by the US. Croatia, meanwhile, who likewise won both their group matches, were beaten 4-1 by Italy. Both teams had to travel to Sydney but, while the Italians came from Brisbane, Croatia had a more arduous journey, making their way from Perth, with a flight time of more than four hours. 

It is, as Swiatek explained, a lot to take on.

“We didn’t have time to rest at all,” said Swiatek. “I’m not going to blame that, because we just have to play tennis. 

“But the past two days were pretty unfortunate. [With] everything, basically. Our travel got delayed yesterday. You know, after sitting all day you have to practise and get used to the conditions, but you can’t do that in 30 minutes. 

“The conditions are similar, the court is basically the same, but, you know, the rain. In Brisbane it was pretty humid and hot. Here, the opposite. So I wouldn’t say I needed to get used to it, but for sure I think traveling all day yesterday, my reaction time was probably a little bit worse.  

“It’s not only about traveling because you have to pack, you have to unpack, you have to organise everything. 

“When you’re traveling in such a big group, there is more going on. So it wasn’t easy. I didn’t recover well. I think I didn’t recover at all.”

Whether that had an impact on her subsequent injury, only the Pole can say. Yet the fact remains that, having already lost the world’s top-ranked man to injury following the withdrawal of Carlos Alcaraz, the Australian Open is now at risk of going ahead without the women’s No 1 too. Emulating the format of the now-defunct ATP Cup by playing the competition across three cities may help to foster the sport in Australia, but at what price?

Redundancy and confusion have also loomed large at the United Cup. Any competition in which five matches can be played over two days with nothing riding on the outcome is clearly imperfect. Spread the action across 18 teams, six groups and three cities, and even the most hardened tennis anorak is likely to encounter the odd moment of bewilderment.

That is not to decry the United Cup concept. A tournament that unites the world’s leading men and women can only be good for the game. Poland may have felt hard done by at seeing an Italy team they dismissed 4-1 in Brisbane reach the final ahead of them, but Vincenzo Santopadre’s side were good value for their semi-final win over Greece, with Martina Trevisan’s three-set victory over Maria Sakkari especially impressive. 

And while Poland could certainly have done without a formidable US team having “home” advantage, it is not without reason that Chris Evert hailed Pegula’s win over Swiatek as “the best match I’ve ever seen her play”. With Pegula in such outstanding form, they could have played the match on a clay court in Warsaw and the result might have been the same. 

Nadal nonetheless had a valid point when he called for a reappraisal of the United Cup’s scheduling. The Spaniard’s frustration stemmed from the fact that Spain were eliminated before their opening match against Great Britain was even finished. Having started their campaign in a three-team group with victory over Australia, Britain were immediately thrust back into action against Spain. Once they went 3-1 up against Nadal and company, their progress was guaranteed, rendering both the concluding mixed doubles and the subsequent tie between Spain and Australia meaningless.

“Putting things in perspective [with] this competition, I find a negative point,” said Nadal. “Competition is great. Idea is great. It’s not great that today we are playing for nothing. It’s the first year of this competition, so that’s the kind of thing that we need to fix, to improve, and to make it more interesting for everyone.

“I really believe that in a group of three, the loser of the first tie needs to play with the team that didn’t play yet, because that makes the competition much more interesting.”

Like many others, Nadal also touched on the wisdom of playing the mixed doubles last, a decision that frequently resulted in dead rubbers. 

All perfectly fair points, you would think. Yet Craig Tiley, the Tennis Australia chief, refused to countenance any criticism, instead pointing to impressive attendance figures and declaring the case against the competition closed. 

“The United Cup’s absolutely fantastic,” said Tiley on Tuesday. “We’ve had full stadiums, we’ve had over 120,000 people already go through the gate. Yesterday, 40,000 people in one day in Perth, Brisbane and in Sydney.  

“That’s remarkable, we’ve never had that. In some ways it beats most major tennis events around the world for one day’s attendance. So I think [it’s been] unbelievably successful.”

It was a curious way to defend an event conceived partly out of a desire to atone for the inequalities of the ATP Cup, a competition every bit as exclusively male as its name implies. Infamously, the now-defunct tournament resulted in some of the world’s top women being relegated to the outside courts at 2019’s Brisbane International, prompting Maria Sharapova to describe the concurrent WTA competition as “a little bit of a second-hand event”. It was a rare misstep by Tennis Australia, but one for which the United Cup has obvious potential to make redress.

From a pickle juice-infused Paula Badosa rallying from a set down to beat Britain’s Harriet Dart and Pegula’s shock win over Swiatek, to the superb quality on show from both players in Trevisan’s passion-drenched semi-final win over Sakkari, the WTA’s finest produced many of the United Cup’s best moments. Surely the case for the event would have been better served by highlighting the positive impact generated by the return of the world’s leading women?

There was certainly little emphasis on anticipated attendance figures two months ago, when the advent of the competition was trumpeted as a victory for gender equality. Ticket sales may have been slow initially but, in a country where tennis enjoys enduring popularity, putting bums on seats was never likely to be a problem, certainly not now that Covid restrictions have been relaxed. Egalitarianism was the watchword and, in that respect at least, the United Cup has been a resounding success. Evert spoke for many when she expressed her enthusiasm for the tournament in a post on social media.

“There’s a lot to be said for these team competitions like United Cup in tennis,” wrote the 18-time grand slam winner. “The men and women players cheering for each other. I’m watching Rafa screaming for Paula Badosa… It warms my heart! So refreshing!”

As Fritz pointed out, welcoming women back into the fold has created a better competition.

“Before we even came into this, I said that having the women playing with us just makes the team a lot stronger from the guys’ side,” said Fritz. 

“We’ve struggled a bit, I’d say. Having the women with us makes the team a lot stronger.”

With players and public alike on board, and Tiley promising a post-tournament “debrief” that promises to see the mixed doubles afforded greater significance, the signs are auspicious for the United Cup. 

Further refinements may be required – there is certainly a case for moving the tournament to a single location, or at least playing the knockout rounds at a “neutral” venue – but Tennis Australia has a potential hit on its hands.

The post The United Cup: hit or miss? appeared first on Love Game Tennis.