Billie Jean King Cup, Italy in final on the wings of Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini
For the third consecutive year, Italy is in the final of the Billie Jean King Cup, the women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup. The Azzurre captained by Tathiana Garbin beat Ukraine by two matches won to one, clinching the decisive point thanks to the two Olympic doubles champions, Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini, who beat the pair consisting of Lyudmyla Kichenok and Marta Kostyuk.
It took a total of eighty-two minutes to get the better of the Ukrainian athletes: in the end, the Errani-Paolini pair prevailed with a score of 6-2, 6-3, completing the comeback started by Paolini herself in the previous singles match, won against Elina Svitolina and useful to even the score after Kostyuk’s victory in the first match against Elisabetta Cocciaretto.
As for the decisive doubles match, the two Italian stars never had any particular difficulty in the first set, while in the second one they slipped as low as 1-3 before resuming the reins of the match overbearingly and winning five games in a row, the last of which was decisive for the success that is worth the qualification to Sunday’s final.
For Italy, therefore, the possibility of an encore is still alive after last year’s success (which avenged the defeat in the 2023 final against Canada). Contending for the cup this year will not be Slovakia, which was eliminated before the Final Eight in Shenzhen.
The other two semifinalists are in fact Great Britain and the United States, which will face each other on Saturday.
