{"id":169228,"date":"2025-09-20T07:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T07:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/169228\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T07:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T07:06:08","slug":"italy-back-in-billie-jean-king-cup-final-after-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/169228\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy back in Billie Jean King Cup final after comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sep 19, 2025, 12:25 PM ET<\/p>\n<p>SHENZHEN, China &#8212; Defending champion Italy reached the Billie Jean King Cup final for a third straight year after coming from behind to beat Ukraine 2-1 in the semifinals on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>French Open champions <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=636\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sara Errani<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2615\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jasmine Paolini<\/a> won the deciding doubles against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3382\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marta Kostyuk<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2478\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lyudmyla Kichenok<\/a> 6-2, 6-3. In the second set, Kostyuk and Kichenok led 3-1 and had a point for 4-2 but double-faulted.<\/p>\n<p>It was the second point earned by Paolini, who was a set and 4-2 down to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=1797\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elina Svitolina<\/a> but recovered to win 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the second singles.<\/p>\n<p>Kostyuk gave Ukraine a strong start by beating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3831\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elisabetta Cocciaretto<\/a> 6-2, 6-3.<\/p>\n<p>Inspired by Paolini, the Italians defeated Slovakia in the 2024 final for a fifth title, having lost to Canada in the final in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine was playing in the semifinals for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>The United States will play Britain in the second semifinal on Saturday. The U.S. beat Kazakhstan in the quarterfinals, while Britain dispatched Japan.<\/p>\n<p>The BJK Cup was formerly known as the Fed Cup, and the United States is the most successful team as an 18-time winner &#8212; but not since 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sep 19, 2025, 12:25 PM ET SHENZHEN, China &#8212; Defending champion Italy reached the Billie Jean King Cup&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-169228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}