{"id":398933,"date":"2026-01-10T08:44:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398933\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T08:44:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:44:06","slug":"bencic-perfect-in-singles-and-mixed-doubles-leads-switzerland-to-united-cup-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398933\/","title":{"rendered":"Bencic, perfect in singles and mixed doubles, leads Switzerland to United Cup final"},"content":{"rendered":"

SYDNEY — Belinda Bencic<\/a> won her eighth match of the week and combined with Jakub Paul<\/a> in the deciding mixed doubles to defeat Belgium’s Elise Mertens<\/a> and Zizou Bergs<\/a> 6-3, 0-6, 10-5 Saturday to qualify Switzerland for the United Cup final.<\/p>\n

Bencic has won all four of her singles matches and four in mixed doubles this week in the team event. Paul, who won just six tour-level doubles matches last year, hit several down-the-line winners at crucial moments to lead Switzerland into Sunday’s final against either the defending champion United States or Poland, who played their semifinal later Saturday.<\/p>\n

“He’s so brave it’s unbelievable,” Bencic said of Paul. “I tell him to go (for it) and he actually goes. It’s crazy.”<\/p>\n

Earlier, Bencic extended her undefeated season-opening singles streak when she beat Mertens 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (0) to put Switzerland ahead 1-0. But Stan Wawrinka<\/a>, who will retire at the end of this season<\/a>, was beaten 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-3 by Bergs to send the match to a mixed doubles decider at Ken Rosewall Arena.<\/p>\n

The turning point in the Wawrinka-Bergs match came in the eighth game of the third set when Bergs broke Wawrinka’s serve to go up 5-3, then held serve to win the match.<\/p>\n

Tournament organizers started play 30 minutes earlier than scheduled with searing temperatures of up to 43 Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in the forecast for Sydney.<\/p>\n

Bencic had won all six sets in her first three matches at the United Cup. She was two games away from another two-set win before Mertens pushed the match the distance.<\/p>\n

Then Mertens came from 3-1 down in the third set, saved a pair of break points that would have given Bencic a 4-1 lead, and was two points away from the set win with Bencic serving at 30-30, down 6-5.<\/p>\n

But Bencic won the last nine points of the match following a decision to change her racket to a freshly-strung one, taking the match in 2 hours, 37 minutes.<\/p>\n

“It feels like 170 kilos fell off my shoulders — I was so stressed; I really wanted to do well, and today I felt so much pressure to not let my team down,” Bencic said.<\/p>\n

On the racket change, she said: “My brain turned off and let my instincts take over. I think it was just a feeling.”<\/p>\n

Later Saturday in the other semifinal, No. 2-ranked Iga Swiatek<\/a> of Poland was scheduled to face No. 4 Coco Gauff<\/a> of the United States and Hubert Hurkacz<\/a> played American Taylor Fritz<\/a>. A mixed doubles match would be played if the teams were level after the singles.<\/p>\n

In the Poland-Australia quarterfinal on Friday, it took a mixed doubles decider to separate the teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY — Belinda Bencic won her eighth match of the week and combined with Jakub Paul in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-398933","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\/398933","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=398933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}