Host nation Australia advanced to the United Cup quarterfinals after a comeback 2-1 victory over Czechia on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
After two-time Grand Slam champion Barbora Krejcikova defeated Maya Joint in straight sets to give Czechia the early lead, Australia faced an uphill climb to qualify on home soil.<\/p>\n
United Cup: Scores<\/a> | Standings<\/a><\/p>\n Alex de Minaur responded in front of a lively Ken Rosewall Arena crowd, defeating Jakub Mensik 6-4, 6-1 to level the tie. He then teamed with Storm Hunter to clinch the result, beating Miriam Skoch and Dalibor Svrcina 6-2, 6-3 in mixed doubles to secure the 2-1 win and top Group D.<\/p>\n Despite the loss, Czechia also advanced to the quarterfinals as the best runner-up in Sydney, thanks in part to Krejcikova\u2019s singles victory.<\/p>\n Krejcikova, ranked No. 63 on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, jumped out to a 4-1 lead against Australian No. 1, who had missed her country\u2019s opening tie of the competition due to illness. Although Joint narrowed the gap to 4-3, Krejcikova held firm to close out the opening set 6-4.<\/p>\n “Felt really good to be back out here today,” Joint said to reporters. “I felt ready to play and ready to compete. Yeah, I mean, love the atmosphere. [I] was pretty disappointed I couldn’t play the first match.”<\/p>\n In the second set, Krejcikova — who defeated Norway\u2019s Malene Helgo in straight sets in Czechia\u2019s first tie of the tournament — again raced to an early lead, winning the first four games before sealing the 6-4, 6-1 win in 1 hour and 15 minutes.<\/p>\n “I\u2019m very happy with my performance,” Krejcikova said on court. “I\u2019m happy with the way I played from beginning to end. I had great support as well. It was a little up and down in the first set, but I\u2019m happy to come through. I was trying to be aggressive from the start, and it\u2019s nice to have some matches under my belt. I felt a little better on the court today.”<\/p>\n In men’s singles, de Minaur delivered a composed performance to defeat Mensik 6-4, 6-1 in 1 hour and 31 minutes and level the tie at 1-1.<\/p>\n “I didn\u2019t start the year the way I wanted to,” said de Minaur, who fell to Casper Ruud in his first group match. “But something I\u2019ve done really well in my career is bouncing back, so I\u2019m happy I bounced back today.”<\/p>\n Mensik produced moments of flair early in the second set, highlighted by an audacious front-facing tweener set up by a booming first serve. But de Minaur remained relentless, saving all four break points he faced and improving his record to 5-0 against the Czech in their head-to-head series.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Host nation Australia advanced to the United Cup quarterfinals after a comeback 2-1 victory over Czechia on Tuesday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44,83],"class_list":["post-395518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395518","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=395518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}