{"id":273504,"date":"2026-02-08T08:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T08:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/273504\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T08:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T08:11:10","slug":"new-zealand-defeat-bosnia-herzegovina-with-comeback-davis-cup-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/273504\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand Defeat Bosnia & Herzegovina With Comeback Davis Cup Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday, 8 February 2026, 7:33 pm
Press Release: Tennis New Zealand<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Left
\nto right: Artem Sitak (Captain), Clint Packer (Coach), Cody
\nAtkinson, James Watt, Anton Shepp, Issac Becroft, Finn
\nReynolds, Brayden Visser (Physio), Ajeet Rai celebrate the
\nDavis Cup win \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

New
\nZealand\u2019s Davis Cup team have secured an emphatic comeback
\nwin over Bosnia & Herzegovina in their Davis Cup World
\nGroup I Play-Off tie, held in Whang\u0101rei.<\/p>\n

New Zealand
\ntrailed 0\u20132 after the opening day, following two singles
\nlosses. However, a clinical performance from Finn Reynolds
\nand Ajeet Rai in the doubles match on day two set the tone
\nfor a memorable turnaround.<\/p>\n

Reynolds, now ranked
\ninside the world\u2019s top 100 for doubles, partnered with
\nRai, who sits inside the world\u2019s top 400. The New Zealand
\npair outranked their opponents and entered the match as
\nfavourites, delivering a dominant performance to win 6-2,
\n6-1 and put New Zealand on the board.<\/p>\n

Despite the
\nmomentum shift, New Zealand\u2019s singles players remained
\nheavily outranked by the opposition. James Watt, currently
\nranked 668 in the world for singles, produced a gutsy
\nperformance to defeat world number 279 Andrej Nedi\u0107 6-3,
\n7-6(4). Watt won the final two points of the second-set
\ntiebreak while battling cramps in both legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt
\nlike I let the crowd down yesterday,\u201d Watt said in his
\non-court interview after the match.
\u201cI was cramping in
\nthat tiebreak, but I wanted to put my body on the line for
\nmy country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advertisement – scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n

The tie was pushed to a deciding
\nrubber, where Anton Shepp stepped up to defeat Mirza Ba\u0161i\u0107
\n6-2, 6-4 and seal the victory for New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis
\nis my debut Davis Cup tie, so thank you so much for making
\nit special,\u201d Shepp said to the Whang\u0101rei crowd following
\nhis win.<\/p>\n

Shepp only recently entered the world\u2019s top
\n1000 after winning the Bayleys Open in Hamilton in December
\nlast year.<\/p>\n

New Zealand will next compete in World
\nGroup I in
\nSeptember.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday, 8 February 2026, 7:33 pmPress Release: Tennis New Zealand Left to right: Artem Sitak (Captain), Clint Packer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2396,3685,111,43,24636,139,69,124817,11112,2022,154337],"class_list":{"0":"post-273504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-events","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newsworthy","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-nz-world-news","16":"tag-scoop","17":"tag-sport","18":"tag-tennis-new-zealand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}