2025 Billie Jean King Cup finals – Can Jessica Pegula guide USA to glory? The big names playing for their nation<\/p>\n
The USA were always going to have a strong roster \u2013 five of the top 20 ranked WTA players are American \u2013 as they are led by world no. 7 Jessica Pegula<\/a>, a back-to-back US Open semi-finalist who is set for her first BJK Cup appearance in 17 months.<\/p>\n Former top 10 player Emma Navarro<\/a> is one to watch in the no. 2 singles spot, while doubles world no. 1 Taylor Townsend<\/a> makes for a sound lineup all round for Team USA, who take on Kazakhstan in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n Despite lots of big names dropping out of the finals, including home hero and Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen<\/a>, there are still plenty of stars on show. Stepping up in Zheng\u2019s absence is Wang Xinyu<\/a>, the 23-year-old who brought home an Olympic medal to China in the mixed doubles event at Paris 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n They meet reigning champions Italy who can also rely on Olympic superpower, boasting the women\u2019s doubles champions in Sara Errani<\/a> and Jasmine Paolini<\/a>. Errani comes off the back of claiming the mixed doubles championship title at the US Open, while Paolini is one of three top-10 singles players in Shenzhen.<\/p>\n Along with Pegula and Paolini, that top-10 trio is completed by Elena Rybakina<\/a> of Kazakhstan, a Grand Slam winner at Wimbledon 2022. Ukraine will have high hopes with their singles duo of Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Elina Svitolina<\/a> and star-in-the-making Marta Kostyuk<\/a>. They take on Spain and former world no. 2 Paula Badosa.<\/p>\n The last quarter-final tie takes place between Japan and Great Britain \u2013 originally touted between Naomi Osaka<\/a> and Emma Raducanu<\/a> respectively, before both players withdrew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2025 Billie Jean King Cup finals – Can Jessica Pegula guide USA to glory? The big names playing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-139764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}