Belgium advanced to the United Cup semifinals for the first time after Elise Mertens and Zizou Bergs recorded singles victories over their Czechia’s Barbora Krejcikova and Jakub Mensik, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mertens and Krejcikova, both former world No. 1 doubles players on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, played a tight opening set in which the Czech broke serve for the first time in the 11th game before serving out the set 7-5.<\/p>\n
United Cup:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Standings<\/a><\/p>\n Mertens, ranked No. 19 in the PIF WTA Rankings, responded strongly in the second set, breaking twice to claim it 6-1 and force a deciding set.<\/p>\n “She’s a very experienced player, especially on big stages,” Mertens said to reporters on Krejcikova. “In that first set, I held my serve till the end when she broke me 7-5. I felt like I needed to push a little bit more, I needed to play a After exchanging early breaks in the third, both players held serve until Mertens struck in the 11th game and then held to close out a 5-7, 6-1, 7-5 victory in 2 hours and 33 minutes.<\/p>\n “Started well in the third, too,” Mertens added. “I broke her. She broke me. Wasn’t really happy about that, but it was actually back and forth. I was really happy with the 4-All. I pushed a little bit more, little bit more aggressive. I knew I had to take risks.”<\/p>\n Mertens\u2019 serve proved decisive as she fired 12 aces and committed just three double faults, while Krejcikova finished with six aces and 10 double faults. The Belgian converted 80% of her break-point opportunities compared to Krejcikova’s 20%.<\/p>\n In the first match of the tie, Bergs defeated Jakub Mensik 6-2, 7-6( 4) in 1 hour and 40 minutes.<\/p>\n Bergs entered the event with a 2-16 mark against top 20 opponents, but with wins over Felix Auger-Aliassime and now Mensik, he’s won two in a row. The 26-year-old was unable to serve out the match with two opportunities to do so, but ultimately crossed the finish line.<\/p>\n Near the end of the match, Bergs played more conservatively as the pressure win mounted. Mensik benefitted from a ball that hit the net and barely bounced over to earn his first service break of the match. He then captured another break at 5-6 with a big backhand up the line before Bergs managed to win the second set in a tiebreak.<\/p>\n “First of all, I didn\u2019t even know I was 5-4 up and then I got broken and I was 5-5,” Bergs said on court. “And then I break back and you just want to finish, you\u2019re so close, you\u2019re playing big points. I got tight, I go backwards, I play defensive. It was a very big struggle in the end. I\u2019m so happy for myself and the team.”<\/p>\n In the semifinals on Jan. 10, Belgium will face Switzerland, and the United States will face the winner of the Australia-Poland quarterfinal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belgium advanced to the United Cup semifinals for the first time after Elise Mertens and Zizou Bergs recorded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428,1959],"class_list":{"0":"post-395862","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\/395862","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=395862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
little bit more aggressive, which I did.”<\/p>\n