Sydney, Jan 10 (IANS) Belinda Bencic maintained her winning run at the start of the season, outlasting Elise Mertens 6-3, 4-6, 7-6(0) in dramatic fashion to put Switzerland up 1-0 against Belgium in the semifinals of the United Cup mixed-gender team tennis competition in Sydney on Saturday.

Veteran Stan Wawrinka will now look to send the Swiss through to the final for the first time when he faces Zizou Bergs in the men’s singles clash and set up a summit clash with the winner of the second semifinal between the USA and Poland.

Saturday’s win was also a revenge of sorts for Bencic, as Mertens had defeated her in their only previous meeting back in 2021. But on Saturday, the 28-year-old Bencic, who came into the clash in impervious form, with a 6-0 record across Switzerland’s first three ties. She had not even come close to losing a set against Leolia Jeanjean, Jasmine Paolini, and Solana Sierra to lead Switzerland to the final four.

Mertens, on the other hand, had back-to-back tough encounters against Victoria Mboko and Barbora Krejcikova after a straight-sets win over Zhu Lin,

The Swiss star was two games away from a comprehensive 6-3, 6-4 victory before Mertens pushed the match into the decider. The Belgian then denied Bencic two chances to seal the second set at 5-5 before breaking serve, claiming a set in which she previously saw a 3-1 lead erased.

That set the stage for a dramatic third set, in which Mertens came from 3-1 down, saved a pair of break points that would’ve given Bencic a 4-1 lead, and was two points away from the win with Bencic serving at 30-30, down 6-5. But Bencic won the last nine points of the match following an in-the-moment decision to change her racquet to a freshly-strung one at that stage, wrapping up victory in 2 hours and 37 minutes.

“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 in the on-court interview after the match.

On the racquet change, she sheepishly confessed: “My brain turned off and let my instincts take over.”

“I think it was just a feeling, and I played with my back against the wall,” she was quoted as saying by the official website of the United Cup. “I was really focused on myself, on breathing, and I’m super happy that I stayed tough in the important moments,” she added.

–IANS

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