{"id":300188,"date":"2025-11-21T22:53:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T22:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/300188\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T22:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T22:53:10","slug":"italy-reaches-davis-cup-final-after-defeating-belgium-in-bologna-semi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/300188\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy reaches Davis Cup final after defeating Belgium in Bologna semi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Italy’s Flavio Cobolli has shown class in consoling his Belgian opponent Zizou Bergs following a dramatic Davis Cup semifinal.<\/p>\n

Cobolli beat Bergs, 6-3, 6-7 (5\/7), 7-6 (17\/15), after saving seven match points in Bologna, the result sending two-time defending champion Italy through to the final.<\/p>\n

After clinching victory, Cobolli ripped off his shirt and celebrated with his teammates.<\/p>\n

He eventually went to comfort Bergs, who was consoled by his team as he cried on his chair.<\/p>\n

Cobolli gave Italy an unassailable 2-0 lead without needing the doubles rubber to be contested.<\/p>\n

Italy is riding a 13-tie winning streak and meets the winner of the second semifinal between Germany and Spain, who is without injured world number one Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Flavio Cobolli celebrates his win in the first Davis Cup semifinal. (Getty Images\/Image Photo Agency)<\/p>\n

Earlier, Matteo Berrettini beat Rapha\u00ebl Collignon, 6-3, 6-4, to help Italy on its way.<\/p>\n

Neither Belgian player has won a singles title on the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n

But Bergs, ranked 43 in the world, played as if it was the biggest match of his life against number 22 Cobolli.<\/p>\n

From 3-3 in the second set tiebreaker Bergs found his range and levelled the match with a forehand to the back of the court, which Cobolli returned long.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz withdraws from Davis Cup Finals<\/a><\/p>\n

World number one Carlos Alcaraz is forced to pull out of Spain’s Davis Cup campaign.<\/p>\n

The players then swapped and missed match-point chances, with Cobolli eventually triumphing with a service winner that Bergs could only just get his racquet on.<\/p>\n

It was a more comfortable match for the 56th-ranked Berrettini, a 2021 Wimbledon runner-up with 10 singles titles on the tour.<\/p>\n

He clinched the first set on serve against number 86 Collignon.<\/p>\n

Collignon dropped his opening serve of the second set, but broke back for 2-2.<\/p>\n

Berrettini, who was ranked as high as six in the world in 2022, withstood his opponent’s aggressive shot-making to break for 4-3 and won on his first match point with a love hold.<\/p>\n

AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italy’s Flavio Cobolli has shown class in consoling his Belgian opponent Zizou Bergs following a dramatic Davis Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,2071,962,6566,2649,105414,5717,2328,32648,96686,103500,2020,85,747,171632],"class_list":["post-300188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-belgium","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-davis-cup","tag-final","tag-flavio-cobolli","tag-germany","tag-italy","tag-matteo-berrettini","tag-raphael-collignon","tag-semis","tag-spain","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-zizou-bergs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300188","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=300188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}