Sunday, 8 February 2026, 7:33 pm
Press Release: Tennis New Zealand
Left
to right: Artem Sitak (Captain), Clint Packer (Coach), Cody
Atkinson, James Watt, Anton Shepp, Issac Becroft, Finn
Reynolds, Brayden Visser (Physio), Ajeet Rai celebrate the
Davis Cup win / Supplied
New
Zealand’s Davis Cup team have secured an emphatic comeback
win over Bosnia & Herzegovina in their Davis Cup World
Group I Play-Off tie, held in Whangārei.
New Zealand
trailed 0–2 after the opening day, following two singles
losses. However, a clinical performance from Finn Reynolds
and Ajeet Rai in the doubles match on day two set the tone
for a memorable turnaround.
Reynolds, now ranked
inside the world’s top 100 for doubles, partnered with
Rai, who sits inside the world’s top 400. The New Zealand
pair outranked their opponents and entered the match as
favourites, delivering a dominant performance to win 6-2,
6-1 and put New Zealand on the board.
Despite the
momentum shift, New Zealand’s singles players remained
heavily outranked by the opposition. James Watt, currently
ranked 668 in the world for singles, produced a gutsy
performance to defeat world number 279 Andrej Nedić 6-3,
7-6(4). Watt won the final two points of the second-set
tiebreak while battling cramps in both legs.
“I felt
like I let the crowd down yesterday,” Watt said in his
on-court interview after the match.
“I was cramping in
that tiebreak, but I wanted to put my body on the line for
my country.”
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The tie was pushed to a deciding
rubber, where Anton Shepp stepped up to defeat Mirza Bašić
6-2, 6-4 and seal the victory for New Zealand.
“This
is my debut Davis Cup tie, so thank you so much for making
it special,” Shepp said to the Whangārei crowd following
his win.
Shepp only recently entered the world’s top
1000 after winning the Bayleys Open in Hamilton in December
last year.
New Zealand will next compete in World
Group I in
September.
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