Bethanie Mattek-Sands had consecutive singles and doubles wins in Alabama on Sunday, ensuring that the US will meet Italy, who will be defending their championship, in November to battle for the Fed Cup. The United States hasn’t won a Fed Cup in 10 years. The last US win was in 2000, and that marked the 17th win which is the current record. Italy defeated the Czech Republic 5-0 to advance to the finals for the 4th time in the last 5 years.
Mary Joe Fernandez is the U.S. team captain, and praised Mattek-Sands’ effort in playing back-to-back matches and winning them both. Though she did have some help in the doubles match with partner Liezel Huber. Together they defeated the Russian team of Alla Kudryavtseva and Elena Dementieva with 6-3, 6-1 in a relatively easy win.
The captain also noted that Bethanie plays singles and doubles each week so she is used to the challenge of playing both. Her singles match against Ekaterina Makarova wasn’t a clean sweep, with 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 and some emotion after a fault call in the final set that led to a double-fault, but then she recovered with a finger-wriggling gesture that energized the crowd.
Mattek-Sands says that it allowed her to get the crowd behind her, and that not only helped her game but served to psyche out Makarova, who was playing in her first Fed Cup. After the double-fault and the gesture, Mattek-Sands won at love. She admits that she’s very competitive and whether it’s tennis or a party game, she wants to win.
That competitive spirit made her the first American, man or woman, to win consecutive matches in a tiebreaker since 1995 when they adopted the best of 5 format. Not only did she play and win back-to-back matches, but she only had 30 minutes between them, hardly time to get much of a rest. She showered, stretched and retaped during that break, and didn’t even have enough time to eat. She apparently ate lunch when there were breaks during the doubles match. The match lasted 65 minutes.
Huber, Mattek-Sands’ partner, has an undefeated record in Cup doubles matches that determine which team goes forward, at 3 for 3. The Russian doubles team, Dementieva and Kudryavtseva, had never played together before they were paired in the semifinals. Dementieva said that they were hoping to advance in the singles match and not have to play the top doubles team because it was difficult when they’d never played together before. She has a 22-5 record in singles matches at the Fed Cup.
She played Melanie Oudin in singles and won 7-6 (7-4), 0-6, 6-3. That gave the Russians 2 to 1 over the Americans. Oudin is 4-4 in singles matches at the Fed Cup, and managed to win the second set as well as start out in the lead during the 3rd, but Dementieva, who’s ranked #6 in the world, improved her service game and took the 3rd set. It was a still a struggle, with the match lasting almost 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Photo Credits: robbiesaurus
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