Great Britain’s women’s wheelchair tennis team ensured their place in the semi-finals of the women’s World Group at the BNP Paribas World Team Cup for the seventh successive year on Wednesday after a 3-0 victory over the USA.
Meanwhile, Wednesday’s third day of the ITF’s flagship wheelchair tennis team event also saw Great Britain’s men start their campaign with a 2-1 win over Argentina.
Fourth seeds Great Britain topped their pool of three nations after Louise Hunt and Jordanne Whiley won both singles of their opening tie against Australia on Tuesday and Hunt and Lucy Shuker went on to seal a 3-0 victory for the loss of just six games in their three rubbers.
Both of Britain’s singles rubbers in the crucial tie against the USA went to three sets, but world No. 9 Shuker prevailed 7-6(8), 3-6, 6-2 to beat Kaitlyn Verfuerth, while world No. 5 Whiley sealed the semi-final berth with a 6-2, 4-6, 6-0 victory over Emmy Kaiser.
For the second successive day Hunt and Shuker complete the victory when defeating Dana Mathewson and Verfuerth 6-2, 6-1 in the doubles.
Great Britain, who have won two bronze medals and three silver medals in the women’s World Group in the last six years, will now play top seeds and defending champions the Netherlands in Friday’s semi-finals in a rematch of the last two finals.
“After a comfortable win against Australia we’ve had two tough singles matches today and are delighted to come through to win both and guarantee the chance to play for a medal again,” said Whiley.
“Playing the Dutch is obviously a difficult task as they’ve won the title so many times, but we will be sure to give it our best.”
“Last year we took the first singles match in the final against the Netherlands, which not many countries have been able to do in the past. Tomorrow we can hopefully rise to the occasion and go one better than last year and reach our third successive World Team Cup final,” said Shuker.
The men’s team begin this year’s World Team Cup as top seeds for the first time in the elite World Group of 12 nations and British No. 3 David Phillipson got Great Britain off to a fine start when he beat Argentina’s Ezequiel Casco 6-2, 6-3.
The much-anticipated contest between world No. 3 Gordon Reid and world No. 4 Gustavo Fernandez saw Fernandez claim a narrow 1-6, 6-1, 6-4 win, but Alfie Hewett made a victorious World Team Cup senior debut after partnering Reid to a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Casco and Fernandez.
“We’ve got a challenging pool that has three of the world’s top five players, including myself, and today was a tough introduction to the World Team Cup.
But we have a very talented team and I’ll take the positives from today’s singles into tomorrow’s contest against Belgium,” said Reid. “It was a good doubles performance today, which only adds to the confidence we’ll take into tomorrow.”Great Britain’s junior team play Belgium for fifth place after securing third place in their round-robin pool, courtesy of a 3-0 victory over Switzerland on the second day.
The contest featured wins for Josh Cooper and Ruairi Logan on their World Team Cup debuts. Cooper, 17, has been playing wheelchair tennis for less than a year after coming through the Tennis Foundation’s Ticket2Tokyo talent initiative in 2014 to find wheelchair tennis stars of the future.
He beat Switzerland’s Angela Grosswiler 6-2, 6-2 in his first singles match for his country before Logan partnered Britain’s Junior Masters doubles champion Luz Esperanza Merry to win the doubles 6-3, 3-6, (11-9) after a match tie-break.
Great Britain is set to play Korea for seventh place in the quad event after injuries during the week hampered the participation of two members of the quad team.