Flavio Cobolli again embraced the responsibility of the moment on Sunday at the United Cup in Perth, where he sent Italy to a deciding mixed-doubles rubber against Switzerland.\n<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old, who helped steer Italy to its third consecutive Davis Cup title in November, produced a gutsy finish to withstand spirited 40-year-old Stan Wawrinka 6-4, 6-7(2), 7-6(4) after two hours, 50 minutes and level the tie at 1-1.<\/p>\n
Belinda Bencic had earlier scored a statement straight-sets win over Jasmine Paolini to give Switzerland the lead before Cobolli fought back. The Swiss could still, however, finish top of Group C on Sunday and qualify for the quarter-finals if they win the tie, which will now be settled in mixed doubles.<\/p>\n
Wawrinka, contesting his final season on Tour, pulled off a dramatic third-set tie-break win over Arthur Rinderknech on Saturday. The three-time major champion remained competitive throughout much of the match against Cobolli, but was unable to generate a break point as the Italian maintained his composure.<\/p>\n
Wawrinka and Cobolli treated the RAC Arena crowd to a captivating duel deep into the deciding set, highlighted by a moment of magic from Cobolli, who steadied himself under pressure and fired a stunning forehand winner on the run to claim a mini-break in a tense final-set tie-break en route to improving to 2-0 in their Lexus ATP Head2Head series.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Bencic put Switzerland in prime position to secure their spot in the United Cup quarter-finals with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over World No. 3 Paolini to take a 1-0 lead in the tie.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really happy with today\u2019s match,\u201d Bencic said on-court after the one hour and 53 minute match. \u201cI lost to her really close at the end of last season. I really had to organize my mind that \u2018now it\u2019s my time, I can do it.\u2019 I thought it was a bit mental today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bencic is now 2-0 in singles, following her 6-2, 6-4 win over Leolia Jeanjean Saturday. Paolini will face Jeanjean in Italy\u2019s next tie against France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flavio Cobolli again embraced the responsibility of the moment on Sunday at the United Cup in Perth, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-391286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391286","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=391286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}