Belinda Bencic kept her undefeated season-opening run at the United Cup in tact in dramatic fashion on Saturday, as she outlasted Elise Mertens 6-3, 4-6, 7-6(0) to put Switzerland up 1-0 in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
United Cup:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Standings<\/a><\/p>\n Mertens beat Bencic in their only previous meeting, back in 2021, but the 28-year-old Bencic who came into the tilt in more impervious form, with a 6-0 record across Switzerland’s first three ties. While Mertens had back-to-back tough tussles against Victoria Mboko and Barbora Krejcikova after a straight-sets win over Zhu Lin, Bencic hadn’t come close to losing a set against Leolia Jeanjean, Jasmine Paolini and Solana Sierra to lead Switzerland to the final four.<\/p>\n She was two games away from an uncomplicated 6-3, 6-4 victory before Mertens pushed the match the distance. The Belgian denied Bencic two chances to knot the second set at 5-5 before breaking serve, claiming a set in which she previously saw a 3-1 lead erased.<\/p>\n That set the stage for a dramatic third set, in which Mertens came from 3-1 down, saved a pair of break points that would’ve given Bencic a 4-1 lead, and was two points away from the win with Bencic serving at 30-30, down 6-5. But Bencic won the last nine points of the match following an in-the-moment decision to change her racquet to a freshly-strung one at that stage, wrapping up victory in 2 hours and 37 minutes.<\/p>\n “It feels like 170 kilos fell off my shoulders — I was so stressed; I really wanted to do well, and today I felt so much pressure to not let my team down,” Bencic said afterwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the racquet change, she sheepishly confessed: “My brain turned off and let my instincts take over.”<\/p>\n “I think it was just a feeling, and I played with my back against the wall,” she added. “I was really focused on myself, on breathing, and I’m super happy that I stayed tough in the important moments.”<\/p>\n Stan Wawrinka looks to send the Swiss through to the final for the first time when he faces Zizou Bergs next.<\/p>\n More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belinda Bencic kept her undefeated season-opening run at the United Cup in tact in dramatic fashion on Saturday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-362177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}