Germany completed a remarkable comeback to beat Argentina in a thrilling doubles decider and set up a Davis Cup semi-final against Spain.<\/p>\n
Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz saved three match points in a final-set tie-break to overcome Horacio Zeballos and Andres Molteni 4-6 6-4 7-6 (12-10) in a gruelling contest lasting two hours and 31 minutes.<\/p>\n
Argentina had put the first point on the board when world number 60 Tomas Etcheverry hit 23 aces to beat Jan-Lennard Struff 7-6 (7-3) 7-6 (9-7) in a high-quality encounter.<\/p>\n
But world number three Alexander Zverev launched Germany’s recovery, beating world number 21 Francisco Cerundolo 6-4 7-6 (7-3) to force the deciding doubles.<\/p>\n
Zverev, the only top 10 singles player competing in the Davis Cup this week, was not at his best but a brilliant tie-break performance kept Germany’s hopes of progressing to a second straight semi-final alive.<\/p>\n
Those hopes were on their way to being extinguished when Zeballos and Molteni dominated the opening set of the doubles rubber.<\/p>\n
But Krawietz and Puetz, who have three Grand Slam doubles titles between them, took the second set before a stalemate in the decider sent the match to a tie-break.<\/p>\n
The Germans missed four match points, including three in a row, in an astonishing tie-break before clinching victory with the fifth.<\/p>\n
“Incredible. There’s not many matches you play in your career like that,” said Puetz. “It feels better to win in the end but what a great match and a great Davis Cup tie.”<\/p>\n
Not since their title-winning 1993 campaign have three-time champions Germany reached the final of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Thursday, Spain brushed aside the absence of Carlos Alcaraz to come from behind and beat the Czech Republic 2-1 and move one step closer to a first title in six years.<\/p>\n
Spain will meet Germany in Bologna on Saturday with two-time defending champions Italy taking on Belgium in the first semi-final on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany completed a remarkable comeback to beat Argentina in a thrilling doubles decider and set up a Davis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-296695","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"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296695","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=296695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}