arrived at the tie in sparkling form<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe 21-year-old had recently beaten five top 20-ranked players and rocketed to her career-high ranking.<\/p>\n
With the visitors missing their four best players, the Australians were hot favourites to advance to the Finals in China in September, but that was quickly dismissed by big-serving Stojsavljevic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my first time playing a match in the Billie Jean King Cup for Team Australia, so there was obviously some nerves out there today and not the way I would have liked to have played and not the result that I would have liked to have had happened,\u201d Perth product Gibson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit to Mika, she came out playing really well, served amazing, so I did my best with what I was able to bring today, but unfortunately it wasn\u2019t enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mika Stojsavljevic is overcome with emotion after beating Talia Gibson during the Billie Jean King Cup qualifier in Melbourne. Photograph: Daniel Pockett\/Getty Images for Billie Jean King Cup<\/p>\n
Gibson had a nervous start against the 2024 US Open junior champion, before clawing her way back to level at 3-3 and pushing the first set to a tiebreak.<\/p>\n
But world No 275 Stojsavljevic steamed through the decider and closed it out 7-4 on a backhand error by her rival.<\/p>\n
The young Brit carried that momentum into the second set, going ahead 5-2, before powerhouse Gibson found her touch and broke her twice to level at 5-5.<\/p>\n
Stojsavljevic sent down three aces in her haul of 12 for the match to survive a marathon game, including five break points, then broke Gibson again to wrap up the match.<\/p>\n
World No 80 Birrell was on track to level for the Australians, taking the first set, but lost momentum against against the gritty 173-ranked Dart.<\/p>\n
The pair exchanged breaks in the third set but Dart broke again to lead 4-3 and wasn\u2019t troubled from that point.<\/p>\n
Dart will partner Jodie Burrage in Saturday\u2019s live doubles match, with the reverse singles scheduled for later in the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s quest to win a place in the Billie Jean King Cup Finals is off to the worst…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-597487","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\/597487","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=597487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}