2026 United Cup \u2013 Poland persist until the end for first win in three finals in Sydney<\/p>\n
Amid the endless sea of Polish fans in the Ken Rosewall Arena, one banner stood out. \u2018Third time lucky\u2019 was the message adorned in white-and-red, and it proved to be prophetic for Poland as they ended their wait for United Cup glory in Sydney.<\/p>\n
Neither Poland nor Switzerland had won the tournament since it replaced the ATP Cup in a mixed team format in 2022. Poland may well have felt the nerves after\u00a0Bencic made it nine wins out of nine in the tournament.<\/p>\n
World No. 2 \u015awi\u0105tek was frustrated to lose in two hours, 13 minutes, having come so close to the title on the last two occasions. Then up stepped former world No. 6 Hurkacz, playing his first ATP tournament since June 2025, with a gritty performance.<\/p>\n
Hurkacz, 28, found a way past three-time Grand Slam champion Wawrinka to improve his head-to-head record to 2-0, adding to impressive wins this week against top 10 players Alexander Zverev<\/a> and Taylor Fritz<\/a>.<\/p>\n Poland\u2019s team effort was exemplified by\u00a0doubles pair Kawa and Zieli\u0144ski, who\u00a0won all five matches they played while dropping just one set.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bencic, named the tournament MVP in the trophy ceremony with a 9-1 record, returns to the WTA top 10 for the first time since April 2023 \u2013 and now as a mother to daughter Bella.<\/p>\n Her teammate and fellow Olympic gold medallist Wawrinka bid an emotional farewell to the Sydney crowd, in what is his final season of professional tennis. The stage is set for the season\u2019s first Grand Slam, the Australian Open, which takes place from 18 January to\u00a01 February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2026 United Cup \u2013 Poland persist until the end for first win in three finals in Sydney Amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-365117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365117","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=365117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}