The United States has qualified for the United Cup quarter-finals in Perth after a thrilling comeback victory over Spain Monday.<\/p>\n
World No. 9 Taylor Fritz had to save a match point against Jaume Munar to keep alive the defending champion’s hopes of topping Group A after Coco Gauff suffered a shock three-set loss to World No. 42 Jessica Bouzas Maneiro in the day’s opening match — it was Bouzas Maneiro’s best win by ranking in her career.<\/p>\n
United Cup: Scores<\/a> | Standings<\/a><\/p>\n The United States’ conquest of Group A was completed when Gauff found redemption on the mixed doubles court, partnering with Christian Harrison to a 7-6 (5), 6-0 win over Inigo Cervantes and Yvonne Cavalle-Reimers after they rallied from an early break in the first set. Spain was eliminated from the United Cup with the loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n Taking the court after Gauff\u2019s shock three-set loss to Jessica Bouzas Maneiro, Fritz knew that the two-time champions would not win the group if he dropped his second match of the tournament, following his opening-round defeat to Sebastian Baez.<\/p>\n Seeing his first break points of the match at 5-6 in the third, Fritz failed to convert both match point opportunities. He later saved a match point on his own serve in the tiebreak before pulling out a 7-6 (4), 3-6, 7-6 (6) victory in 3 hours and 14 minutes.<\/p>\n “It was a crazy match,” Fritz said. “I thought Jaume played very well. I felt I was in a lot of his service games, but he played so well on so many of the big points.<\/p>\n “I had to come up with a lot to keep myself in the match or convert any of the big points. It was really tough, really physical.”<\/p>\n Fritz took a seven-minute medical time-out at 4-all in the third set to treat a bloodied toe after a long slide chasing a drop shot. He saved a break point in the following game. Fritz is hoping for a repeat of last year\u2019s United Cup run, when he also dropped his opening match before winning four in a row to guide the Americans to their second title in three years.<\/p>\n Fritz entered the tournament after intensive offseason rehab on his knee for what he described as \u201cpretty serious tendonitis,\u201d but he didn\u2019t give an inch to Munar in a series of grinding baseline exchanges. The World No. 9 also fired 16 aces, adding to the 22 he hit against Baez.<\/p>\n It was a herculean effort from Fritz, one which was needed only because Bouzas Maneiro — coming off a breakout 2025 season in which she reached a career-high ranking of No. 40, advanced to the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time at Wimbledon and made her first WTA 1000 quarterfinal in Montreal — stunned Gauff earlier in the day.<\/p>\n Seemingly intent on carrying the momentum from last season’s breakthrough into 2026, the Spaniard upset Gauff in dominant fashion, 6-1, 6-7 (3), 6-0 at RAC Arena. The loss is Gauff\u2019s first at the United Cup in 10 matches across singles and doubles; she entered the day 6-0 in singles and 9-0 overall.<\/p>\n The win marked Bouzas Maneiro\u2019s first career Top 5 victory and gave Spain a 1-0 lead over the United States ahead of the men\u2019s singles match between Fritz and Munar.<\/p>\n Highlights: Bouzas Maneiro upsets Gauff at United Cup 2026<\/p>\n “I know Coco and she\u2019s a fighter,” Bouzas Maneiro said after the match. “She’s there all the time in the match, so I knew that I had to be there, and even if I\u2019m 4-1 up, I have to be there. And yeah, she won the second set, and I went to the bathroom and was trying to focus just to take it point by point.<\/p>\n “And that was my mentality in the third set. To be [there] with power every point because even if you are [up] 3-0 or 4-0, you have to be ready.”<\/p>\n Bouzas Maneiro set the tone immediately, breaking the World No. 4 in the opening game en route to a 5-0 lead. She went on to break the American in all four of her service games in the first set and nine times overall.<\/p>\n Her forehand — which produced 11 winners in the match — fueled her early surge, but her return game, paired with Gauff\u2019s serving struggles, defined the rest of the match. It was a stark contrast to Gauff\u2019s dominant performance earlier in the week against Argentina\u2019s Solana Sierra.<\/p>\n Gauff landed just 60% of her first serves and won just under 60% of those points. She was further undone by 14 double faults and 54 unforced errors. Bouzas Maneiro could only match Gauff\u2019s first-serve numbers but managed her unforced errors more effectively (41) and converted 9-of-12 break points.<\/p>\n Still, Gauff refused to go quietly despite her struggles. She rallied from 4-1 down to take the second set in a tiebreak and appeared poised for a remarkable comeback. But Bouzas Maneiro broke to open the decider and never looked back, racing to a 4-0 lead after saving two break points in a five-deuce game.<\/p>\n After two hours and 12 minutes, Bouzas Maneiro closed out the match with a third-set bagel, earning a bit of redemption after being blanked in a deciding set by Sierra earlier in the week, and secured the biggest win of her career despite her country’s elimination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States has qualified for the United Cup quarter-finals in Perth after a thrilling comeback victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428,1959],"class_list":{"0":"post-389043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389043","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=389043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}