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Australia will progress to the semi-finals of the Davis Cup after being taken to the deciding rubber in a 2-1 win over the United States of America overnight in Malaga.
The result would come through victories from Thanasi Kokkinakis winning 6-1 4-6 7-6 (14) over world No.21 Ben Shelton and the doubles pair of Matthew Ebden and Jordan Thompson triumphing over the pair of Shelton and Tommy Paul 6-4 6-4.
Alex de Minaur in his singles rubber would fall short after losing to Taylor Fritz in straight sets 6-3 6-4 which forced the deciding doubles rubber.
With De Minaur coming into the squad for the first time this year after his ATP Finals campaign in Jeddah, there were questions surrounding the Australians of who between Alexi Popyrin and Thanasi Kokkinakis would play in the first tie against the USA.
In the end, captain Lleyton Hewitt would end up selecting Kokkinakis over the higher-ranked Alexi Popyrin which surprised some fans and experts expecting the world No.24 in Popyrin to be selected against the US.
While Kokkinakis may not have the higher rank over Popryin, he was coming into Malaga having won his last tournament at an ATP Challenger series in Sydney and had been unbeaten so far in his Davis Cup campaign this year.
Thanasi Kokkinakis (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)
And Hewitt’s decision looked to have paid off with Kokkinakis storming away to win the set 6-1 in the space of 22 minutes with Shelton looking nervous in his debut at the Davis Cup, making eight unforced errors and a double fault on set point to give the South Australian the opening set.
However, Shelton would recover from his shaky opening set to put Kokkinakis under pressure within the second set. He would break Kokkinakis at the start of the set to take a 1-0 lead with a service break. Kokkinakis did have multiple opportunities to break which included having three break points when the set was 3-2 in favour of Shelton.
But the world No.21 would find a way to hold serve and would be able to close out the set. With this service break, he established in the first game; he would go on to win the second set 6-4.
In the deciding set, Shelton and Kokkinakis would throw everything at it to try and win for their country but neither were able to break each other’s serve. Shelton would have multiple opportunities within the first game to break Kokkinakis’ serve and with the match poised at 5-5 to be able to serve for the win.
But on both occasions, Kokkinakis fought off Shelton’s challenge and would serve through his ground game which would see the game go to a tiebreak.
Going to a deciding tiebreak, both men would have multiple opportunities to win the match during the tiebreak with both seemingly finding ways to stay alive.
And after 29 points in the tiebreak and what is now the longest tiebreak played by an Australian at a Davis Cup tie and the sixth-longest in Davis Cup history; Kokkinakis would covert his seventh chance at match point to win the tiebreak 16-14 and give Australia a 1-0 lead.
Whilst an incredibly even match, it would ultimately be Shelton’s 29 unforced errors in comparison to Kokkinakis’ 15 that would split the difference.
In his on-court interview after his victory, Kokkinakis went on to say: “It’s a massive win for me… Lleyton showed faith in me, anyone could have played but I just wanted to give it my all.
“I don’t know if I’ve been that pumped up in my life, I wanted that one bad, I wanted to help my team.”
Alex de Minaur. (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
With Australia in the lead of the tie, the pressure on America’s No.1 player and the world No.4 Taylor Fritz would increase to try and keep the tie alive as he played Australia’s No.1 player and world No.9 Alex de Minaur in the second rubber.
There would also be some pressure under De Minaur coming into the match to how much of an influence his hip injury that he sustained at Wimbledon would have on his performance.
These two had just come back from the ATP Finals in which both would play each other in the round robin with Fritz coming back from losing the opening set to win in three helping him qualify for the final.
And Fritz would continue his form from last week to start dominantly over De Minaur in the opening set, winning the first three games. While De Minaur was able to work himself back into the game managing to hold serve throughout the rest of the set, he was unable to break, seeing Fritz secure a 6-3 first-set win.
With a more even end to the first set, De Minaur would begin the second set well starting his opening game with two aces to get the ball rolling which was followed up with the creation of two break point opportunities in the second game to break Fritz’s game, converting on the second break point in the game and create a service break.
But Fritz would break back straight away bringing it back to an even score of 2-2 and each would hold serve until the ninth game in which Fritz would break De Minaur to lead 5-4 and then hold serve to win the set 6-4 and create a 1-1 draw leading into the final rubber of the tie.
Fritz’s domination would show through the forced errors of De Minaur throughout the entire match with De Minaur making 28 forced errors to Fritz’s 18 which would give the US a fighting chance in the doubles.
In the deciding doubles match, the US would make a late switch with captain Bob Bryan swapping out the experienced doubles players Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek for the pair of Tommy Paul and Ben Shelton whose main experience comes from the singles.
The Australians would come in unchanged from their initial announcement pair of Olympic Gold Medallist Matthew Ebden and the world No.3 in doubles Jordan Thompson.
The Ebden-Thompson pair would begin well getting the first break of the match within the opening set to push out to a quick 3-1 lead in the first set.
Their experience in the doubles game became increasingly more and more evident in contrast to the US seemingly being able to keep more pressure on the US serve than what Paul and Shelton were able to do to them. And it would show as they closed out the set with a perfectly timed lob to close out the first set 6-4.
The second set would see a slightly tighter match at play. Two volleys within the sixth game of the second set by Ebden would hit the net seeing the US get their first break point of the match. But Ebden would come through on the net to help hold serve.
In the ninth game, with the match tied 4-4, Australia looked to have got its chance of breaking the US’s serve and being able to close out the rubber and tie for an Australian victory getting two break points at 15-40. However, it would not be without a fight with Shelton and Paul recovering to 40-40 and even getting an advantage. But Ebden and Thompson once again showed their experience and would secure the break and then hold serve to win 6-4 6-4.
Australia will either have a rematch of the 2023 Davis Cup against Italy or Argentina in the semi-final. The semi-final tie will take place on Saturday night starting at 11pm AEDT as they hope to progress to the final and end their 21-year drought.
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