Who Will Australia Face in the Semi-Finals? Can They Win It All?

Australia (Commonwealth) — Thanks to inspired captaincy, a nerve-wracking underdog victory by Thanasi Kokkinakis, and a traditional Australian doubles heritage, Australia advanced to the Davis Cup semi-finals in Spain after a stunning 2-1 victory over the USA.

Australia, the 28-time champions, defeated the 32-time champions in the historic men’s “World Cup of tennis” on Thursday. In the crucial captaincy calls of their quarterfinal match in Malaga, Lleyton Hewitt outperformed his American opponent Bob Bryan.

First, Hewitt boldly chose world number 77 Kokkinakis to take on big-hitting left-hander Ben Shelton, rated 56 spots higher. The Australian outsider triumphed easily, winning a thrilling decisive tiebreaker 6-1, 4-6, 7-6 (16/14) after saving four match chances.

Then, in the final rubber, Jordan Thompson and Matt Ebden, the doubles Grand Slam champions, teamed up for the first time in the Cup to upset Shelton and Tommy Paul 6-4, 6-4, following Taylor Fritz’s 6-4, 6-4 thrashing of Alex de Minaur in the number one’s match.

Amazing. “I could have run over the top of the entire bench when we won the break there at four-all,” Thompson said. You see, I had my heart bleeding green and gold on my sleeve.

In an attempt to upset the Australians by bringing out two of his singles players, American captain Bryan dropped his Olympic silver medalist doubles team, Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek.  However, the move backfired catastrophically.

Bryan groaned, “Our goal was to slightly surprise the Aussies.” Hewitt responded, “To be honest, it didn’t really surprise us that much.” During the week, I had witnessed them doing drills.

After two runner-up finishes, Australia is now one victory away from a third consecutive final appearance. However, they will need to defeat either Argentina or Italy on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) in order to have another chance to win the Cup on Sunday for the first time in 21 years.

Even though Kokkinakis had only participated in one lower-level Challenger match in Sydney and a losing Laver Cup singles match in the two months following two significant victories at the Davis Cup qualifiers in Valencia, playing him hadn’t been a risk.

Hewitt smiled and said, “He (Kokkinakis) fought like the champion of the New South Wales Open Challenger about a month ago.” Hewitt also disregarded Thompson and Alexei Popyrin, the much higher-ranked Montreal Masters winner.

Making these choices is obviously never simple, but we know that if we can get him to play at his best, he poses a threat to everyone, regardless of who it is. I firmly believed in him.

He completely reimbursed us after we let him off the leash today after putting him on ice for the most part up until this point.

Hewitt’s confidence paid off when he defeated a frustratingly flat de Minaur in the second singles, setting up a rematch with Fritz, the world number four, who had narrowly defeated him at the ATP Finals the week before.

Fifteen minutes prior to their scheduled court time, Bryan made his doubles switch public. This was the pivotal moment.

We were anticipating the other couple, but we were prepared because we knew they had amazing doubles players,” Ebden, who, like Thompson, had won grand slam doubles, but both with a different partner, Purcell, who was supporting him at the courtside following recent injury setbacks, added. “What a day!…”

The 112th Davis Cup, a competition between national men’s tennis teams, will take place in 2024. The 2024 ATP Tour will host it. Rafael Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, played his final professional tennis match. The winning team will receive $2,678,571, or roughly £2,122,817. Earnings for the runners-up will total $1,607,143, or roughly £1,682,372.

With 32 wins, the United States is the most successful country in the competition’s history. Great Britain and France are equal for third place with ten, while Australia comes in second with 28 (either individually or as part of an Australasia team).

The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men’s tennis. It is organised by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and contested annually between teams from over 150 competing countries, making it the world’s largest annual team sporting competition.