Billie Jean King Cup: Austria fails in the USA
The Austrian team lost the meeting with the USA in the Billie Jean King Cup in Delray Beach 0:4.
by p.m
last edit: Apr 16, 2023, 08:38 am
Apparently, the hostesses took the ÖTV ladies extremely seriously and, with Jessica Pegula (WTA 3) and Coco Gauff (WTA 6), competed for the first time since 2005 in the nations competition with two players among the top six in the world. On Friday, Austria's number one, Julia Grabher (WTA 78), was clearly the loser against US youngster Gauff in the Delray Beach Tennis Center with 1: 6, 3: 6, Sinja Kraus (WTA 153) against Pegula with 0: 6 5 :7 each despite good resistance, especially in the second set. On Saturday, the picture was initially very similar: Grabher kept up excellently in the one-man duel with Pegula, especially in the second round, but the renewed 1:6, 3:6 sealed the defeat of the red-white-red national team.
At the end of the international match, a doubles match followed in the U-state of Florida, which played Kraus and Melanie for Austria as planned. The Viennese and the Upper Austrian lost
with 1: 6, 4: 6 against the US women, where instead of Danielle Collins Gauff entered as in the singles, alongside Caty McNally.
At 1: 1 and 0:30, the Austrians knocked on the first break, instead Pegula countered with seven points in a row, breaks to 3: 1 and 5: 1 and won the first set after only 22 minutes of play. This time, too, Grabher put up a much better resistance in the second round, kept up for a long time and even sniffed the 4:4 equalizer at 3:4 and 0:3 0 as a setback. But again her opponent countered with a series of eight points this time, to which Grabher contributed a lot with three double faults at the beginning of her extremely botched last service game. After a total of 55 minutes everything was over and decided and the dream of the sensation was shattered.