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<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cIt was a very emotional match,\u201d Zielinski said of the mixed doubles clincher. \u201cAll four of us have been sitting on the bench for a good five, four hours watching around. There was a lot of emotion building up leading towards that match, a lot of responsibility and pressure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was kind of my way to let it out and get myself fired up, get Katia fired up, show we\u2019re there to fight, to show that we\u2019re capable of winning this match, that even though it was a tough environment, we were ready to fight and face it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next, Poland will take the fight to defending-champion United States in a rematch of a quality 2024 United Cup final. The winner of the USA vs. Poland semifinal will play either Belgium or Switzerland in the United Cup final.<\/p>\n
World No. 2 Iga Swiatek was a formidable force blitzing Australia\u2019s Maya Joint 6-1, 6-1 in a 57-minute thrashing to stake Poland to a 1-0 lead in tonight\u2019s opener.<\/p>\n
Swiatek served 72 percent and did not drop serve dispatching Joint with ruthless resolve.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a clear plan of what I wanted to do. I just focused on that,\u201d Swiatek said. \u201cWanted to be intensive from the beginning, put pressure on Maya, and it worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery ball mattered. I didn\u2019t want to give any free points. I also kind of felt the court a bit better than the last two matches and used of the opportunities that I had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex de Minaur showed stiff resolve fending off a resurgent Hubert Hurkacz, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, to level the tie and force the decisive mixed doubles match.<\/p>\n
After de Minaur spent two hours, 18-minutes on court in singles, captain Lleyton Hewitt opted to start Smith alongside Hunter in the mixed doubles rather than pushing the Australian No. 1 in back-to-back matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think with Alex, he was feeling a few tweaks the last few days, as well,\u201d captain Hewitt said. \u201cHe\u2019s been doing a lot of training in the off-season to get ready for five-set matches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe decided the best thing for his body moving forward was not to put his hand up to play mixed tonight. It is tough though, as well, to make a decision so quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, if you are that second match, to turn around straightaway and switch on. You just don\u2019t want to risk injury as well at certain times, especially the amount of moving he had to do tonight against a bloody quality player out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year ago, Coco Gauff surprised Swiatek, 6-4, 6-4, in the United Cup semifinals and Taylor Fritz out-dueled Hurkacz in a gripping third-set tiebreaker to lead the United States to the United Cup.<\/p>\n
Swiatek said courage will be key to her rematch vs. Gauff in a clash of two of the world\u2019s top four-ranked players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to prepare the plan tomorrow. For sure it\u2019s a good match, like exciting for the fans I think,\u201d Swiatek said. \u201cBut I\u2019ll focus on my singles. Obviously we know each other\u2019s game pretty well with Coco.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key for me will be just to focus on myself, try to implement the stuff that I worked on during the pre-season and be brave with the decisions. Yeah, we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Richard Pagliaro | Friday, January 9, 2026Photo credit: United Cup Facebook Poland presented a unified front to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-398733","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\/398733","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=398733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}