{"id":154749,"date":"2025-09-19T16:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/154749\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T16:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:50:09","slug":"italy-back-in-billie-jean-king-cup-final-after-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/154749\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy back in Billie Jean King Cup final after comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"

SHENZHEN, China — Defending champion Italy reached the Billie Jean King Cup final for a third straight year after coming from behind to beat Ukraine 2-1 in the semifinals on Friday.<\/p>\n

French Open champions Sara Errani<\/a> and Jasmine Paolini<\/a> won the deciding doubles against Marta Kostyuk<\/a> and Lyudmyla Kichenok<\/a> 6-2, 6-3. In the second set, Kostyuk and Kichenok led 3-1 and had a point for 4-2 but double-faulted.<\/p>\n

It was the second point earned by Paolini, who was a set and 4-2 down to Elina Svitolina<\/a> but recovered to win 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the second singles.<\/p>\n

Kostyuk gave Ukraine a strong start by beating Elisabetta Cocciaretto<\/a> 6-2, 6-3.<\/p>\n

Inspired by Paolini, the Italians defeated Slovakia in the 2024 final for a fifth title, having lost to Canada in the final in 2023.<\/p>\n

Ukraine was playing in the semifinals for the first time.<\/p>\n

The United States will play Britain in the second semifinal on Saturday. The U.S. beat Kazakhstan in the quarterfinals, while Britain dispatched Japan.<\/p>\n

The BJK Cup was formerly known as the Fed Cup, and the United States is the most successful team as an 18-time winner — but not since 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHENZHEN, China — Defending champion Italy reached the Billie Jean King Cup final for a third straight year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-154749","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\/154749","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=154749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}