Bencic leads Switzerland into the United Cup final
Belinda Bencic won her eighth match of the week and combined with Jakub Paul in the deciding mixed doubles to defeat Belgium’s Elise Mertens and Zizou Bergs 6-3, 0-6, 10-5 Saturday to qualify Switzerland for the United Cup final. Bencic has won all four of her singles matches and four in mixed doubles this week in the team event. Paul, who won just six tour-level doubles matches last year, hit several down-the-line winners at crucial moments to lead Switzerland into Sunday’s final against either the defending champion United States or Poland, who played their semifinal later Saturday.
“He’s so brave it’s unbelievable,” Bencic said of Paul. “I tell him to go (for it) and he actually goes. It’s crazy.” Earlier, Bencic extended her undefeated season-opening singles streak when she beat Mertens 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (0) to put Switzerland ahead 1-0. But Stan Wawrinka, who will retire at the end of this season, was beaten 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-3 by Bergs to send the match to a mixed doubles decider at Ken Rosewall Arena. The turning point in the Wawrinka-Bergs match came in the eighth game of the third set when Bergs broke Wawrinka’s serve to go up 5-3, then held serve to win the match.
Tournament organisers started play 30 minutes earlier than scheduled with searing temperatures of up to 43 Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in the forecast for Sydney. Bencic had won all six sets in her first three matches at the United Cup. She was two games away from another two-set win before Mertens pushed the match the distance. Then Mertens came from 3-1 down in the third set, saved a pair of break points that would have given Bencic a 4-1 lead, and was two points away from the set win with Bencic serving at 30-30, down 6-5.
But Bencic won the last nine points of the match following a decision to change her racket to a freshly-strung one, taking the match in 2 hours, 37 minutes. “It feels like 170 kilos fell off my shoulders — I was so stressed; I really wanted to do well, and today I felt so much pressure to not let my team down,” Bencic said. On the racket change, she said: “My brain turned off and let my instincts take over. I think it was just a feeling.”
Later Saturday in the other semifinal, No. 2-ranked Iga Swiatek of Poland was scheduled to face No. 4 Coco Gauff of the United States and Hubert Hurkacz played American Taylor Fritz. A mixed doubles match would be played if the teams were level after the singles. In the Poland-Australia quarterfinal on Friday, it took a mixed doubles decider to separate the teams.
