The Billie Jean King Cup semifinals are set.<\/p>\n
Ukraine, playing without Marta Kostyuk, won the first tie on Thursday, defeating Belgium 2-1. Anhelina Kalinina gave Ukraine the early lead with a 6-7 (6), 6-1, 6-1 win over Jana Otzipka, handing the baton to World No. 7 Elina Svitolina to clinch it. But in one of the biggest WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz upsets of the year, World No. 217 Greet Minnen came from a set down to stun Svitolina 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4. It was only the second Top 10 win of her career, and the first since Wimbledon four years ago.<\/p>\n
Despite holding the momentum going into the deciding rubber, Belgium ultimately fell short when Kalinina and Lyudmyla Kichenok beat Magali Kempen and Lara Salden 6-3, 6-3 in the winner-take-all doubles match.<\/p>\n
The second semifinal in Shenzhen was even more dramatic. Home nation China took the 1-0 lead against two-time defending champion Italy when Zhang Shuai breezed past Elisabetta Cocciaretto 6-0 6-2. But Jasmine Paolini leveled it with a 6-3, 7-6 (4) win over Zheng Qinwen, coming off a quarterfinal run at the US Open.<\/p>\n
In the decider, former French Open champions Paolini and Sara Errani topped Guo Hanyu and Jiang Xinyu 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 to send Italy back to the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Paolini has now won 10 consecutive Billie Jean King Cup matches.<\/p>\n
Ukraine and Italy will play for a spot in the final on Saturday, Sept. 26. It’s a rematch of last year’s semifinal, which Italy won 2-1. Paolini beat Svitolina in three sets to level that tie, and then Paolini and Errani won the third match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier in the week, Czechia swept Great Britain and Spain beat an Elena Rybakina-less Kazakshtan. Their semifinal match will be on Friday, Sept. 25.<\/p>\n
The final is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Billie Jean King Cup semifinals are set. Ukraine, playing without Marta Kostyuk, won the first tie on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-781634","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\/781634","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=781634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}