{"id":310403,"date":"2025-11-27T14:37:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T14:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/310403\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T14:37:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T14:37:31","slug":"davis-cup-finals-italy-beat-spain-to-win-historic-third-successive-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/310403\/","title":{"rendered":"Davis Cup Finals: Italy beat Spain to win historic third successive title"},"content":{"rendered":"

“At the end, I looked at my bench and found something in my heart.”<\/p>\n

For Flavio Cobolli, the faces cheering for him from the sidelines provided the extra impetus he needed as he fought to realise his dream of becoming a world champion.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old secured a historic third successive Davis Cup title for Italy by battling back from a set and a break down against Spain’s Jaume Munar to seal a 2-0 triumph in front of an jubilant home crowd in Bologna.<\/p>\n

Cobolli’s gritty 1-6 7-6 (7-5) 7-5 victory, achieved two days after he confirmed Italy’s place in Sunday’s showpiece by winning an epic 32-point tie-break<\/a>, followed Matteo Berrettini’s 6-3 6-4 win over Pablo Carreno Busta.<\/p>\n

It was an Italian double act long in the making.<\/p>\n

Berrettini worked with Cobolli’s father, former player Stefano, as a youngster. He would often be called upon to babysit Cobolli – six years his junior – and kept him occupied by playing tennis with him.<\/p>\n

A video shared on social media by Italian outlet Spazio Tennis, external<\/a> shows Berrettini towering above Cobolli as they walk off a tennis court after practising together in 2011. <\/p>\n

Fourteen years later, Cobolli and the team-mate he describes as being “like a brother” to me were walking off the court in Italy as Davis Cup champions, having gone unbeaten in singles in the tournament.<\/p>\n

“It’s impossible to describe this feeling. I dreamed a lot for this night,” Cobolli said.<\/p>\n

“We cannot lose for our country. Sometimes you learn, but you never lose. <\/p>\n

“I don’t know what I did today. I don’t know where I am. The only thing I know is that I am a world champion.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“At the end, I looked at my bench and found something in my heart.” For Flavio Cobolli, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-310403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310403","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=310403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}