Defending champion Italy became the first nation to reach the semifinals of this year\u2019s Billie Jean King Cup with a 2-0 win over host China on Tuesday in Shenzhen.<\/p>\n
Italy rallied in both singles matches to clinch the tie.<\/p>\n
Cocciaretto rallies twice to give Italy the lead<\/p>\n
In the opener, China\u2019s Yue Yuan, ranked No. 102, thrilled the home crowd by taking the first set 6-4 and building a 5-2 lead in the second. But Elisabetta Cocciaretto fought back, winning five straight games to steal the set 7-5.<\/p>\n
Yuan again surged ahead in the third, breaking twice for a 4-0 lead and later going up 5-2. Cocciaretto, ranked No. 91, responded once more, drawing level at 5-all before breaking again and holding serve to close out a 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 victory in 2 hours, 52 minutes. The win put Italy up 1-0.<\/p>\n
Paolini rallies to clinch tie for Italy<\/p>\n
In the second singles match, China\u2019s Wang Xinyu, ranked No. 34, broke Jasmine Paolini in the eighth game to take the opening set 6-4.<\/p>\n
Wang secured another break in the second and served at 5-3, but Paolini, the World No. 8, turned the match around. She broke back, forced a tiebreak and took the set to keep Italy\u2019s semifinal hopes alive.<\/p>\n
With momentum on her side, Paolini broke early in the third set for a 2-0 lead. Wang responded by winning four straight games to go up 4-2, but Paolini answered with a run of her own, sweeping the final four games to close out a 4-6, 7-6, 6-4 victory. The win secured Italy\u2019s place in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Next up<\/p>\n
Italy will face the winner of Wednesday\u2019s quarterfinal between five-time champion Spain and Ukraine, which is seeking its first title in the competition. On Thursday, Kazakhstan meets the United States and Great Britain faces Japan in the remaining quarterfinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion Italy became the first nation to reach the semifinals of this year\u2019s Billie Jean King Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593,5452],"class_list":{"0":"post-150141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}