Four-time finalist Great Britain advanced to the Billie Jean King Cup semifinals for the second straight year after defeating Japan 2-0 in Thursday\u2019s quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Despite missing their top-ranked player Emma Raducanu, Britain clinched both singles matches in straight sets to set up a semifinal clash with the United States, the tournament\u2019s most successful nation.<\/p>\n
Kartal gives Britain the perfect start<\/p>\n
Britain’s Sonay Kartal opened the tie with a strong start, racing to a 4-0 lead against Japan’s Ena Shibahara before closing out the first set 6-3.<\/p>\n
The second set was tighter, with both players unable to break the other’s serve, forcing a tiebreak. Shibahara jumped to a 3-1 lead before Kartal rallied to earn triple match point. The 23-year-old Brit, ranked No. 82, sealed a 6-3, 7-6 (4) win on her second opportunity. Kartal had also won both her matches on her Billie Jean King Cup debut in April.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Boulter seals the victory with easy win\u00a0<\/p>\n
Britain’s Katie Boulter, ranked No. 55, then dominated Japan\u2019s Moyuka Uchijima 6-1, 6-2 in the second singles to secure her nation’s place in the last four. Uchijima, ranked No. 92, struggled to find rhythm as Boulter\u2019s solid baseline play proved too strong.<\/p>\n
Semifinal lineup set<\/p>\n
Great Britain will face the United States in Saturday\u2019s semifinal. Earlier Thursday, Jessica Pegula and Taylor Townsend clinched the deciding doubles match to give the U.S. a 2-1 victory over Kazakhstan.\u00a0On Friday, in the first semifinal, five-time champion Italy will meet Ukraine, who like Britain is also seeking its first Billie Jean King Cup title.<\/p>\n
Italy scored a 2-0 win over China while Ukraine overcame Spain by an identical score in the quarterfinals earlier in the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four-time finalist Great Britain advanced to the Billie Jean King Cup semifinals for the second straight year after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-152284","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","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152284","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=152284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}