Sydney, Jan 6 (IANS) Elise Mertens secured Belgium’s victory over Canada with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 triumph against Victoria Mboko. Her 2 hour and 5-minute triumph followed a stunning 6-4, 6-2 win by Zizou Bergs against World No. 5 Felix Auger-Aliassime, putting Belgium on the brink of the quarterfinals.

Despite winning the tie, the Belgians need a clean sweep to advance. If Canada wins mixed doubles, then it advances to the knockout rounds.

Mertens rode a stellar serving performance to a one-set lead, holding at love in each of her first four service games and breaking Mboko decisively to love in the sixth game as well.

Though Mboko showed the fighting spirit but Mertens earned the decisive break of serve in the fourth game from a 30-0 deficit, and won a staggering 93% of points behind her first serve in the match overall, WTA reports.

Earlier, Bergs secured his second career Top 10 victory in 1 hour and 28 minutes over Auger-Aliassime, having also defeated then-World No. 9 Andrey Rublev 10 months ago in Miami.

“I actually forgot this was my second Top-10 win, so that’s really huge, actually, especially with a convincing way of playing,” Bergs said.

“I just looked at it as a match. This is a a little different format, so we’re still down. We still have to win a lot of matches today, so that was more the focus and today I just had to get the job done,” he added.

Auger-Aliassime, however, enjoyed the best season of his career in 2025, reaching the US Open semi-finals and competing in the Nitto ATP Finals. He looked sharp in his first match of the season against Zhang, but was unable to dominate the same way against Bergs, who saved all five break points he faced.

–IANS

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