Great Britain’s Billie Jean King Cup qualifier tie against the Czech Republic has gone down to the wire following Harriet Dart’s 6-0 5-7 6-2 win over Linda Fruhvirtova – her first ever in singles at BJK Cup. It comes after Emma Raducanu suffered an emphatic 6-1 6-1 loss to the Czech team’s top player Marketa Vondrousova earlier on Saturday, leaving the tie all square at 2-2. A doubles match will now decide the winner, with an injury set to prevent Raducanu from being an option for the team.
Dart and Raducanu now have one win and one loss apiece over the BJK Cup qualifier tie, with Dart losing to Vondrousova and Raducanu defeating Tereza Martincova on Friday before today’s results. It means the winning nation will be decided by a final doubles rubber, with both captains likely to put forward their best players so they can come away victorious.
Great Britain currently has Sonay Karthal and Katie Swan as their team while the Czechs have Marie Bouzkova and Fruhvirtova. Britain’s captain Anne Keothavong and the opponent’s captain Petr Pala are both expected to make changes to the lineups with the doubles match now deciding who advances to the BJK Cup finals at the end of the year.
A win in the qualifiers would allow Britain to advance to the Billie Jean King Cup Finals later this year. A loss means they will be out of contention for the ‘world cup of women’s tennis’ for 2022 and would go into the play-offs the same week as the Finals, for the chance to either return to the qualifier stand in 2023 or drop even further down to the World Group.
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Pala has already made a change today by swapping Dart’s original singles opponent Martincova with Fruhvirtova, a move that did not pay off for the Czech team in the end. It would have been expected that Dart and Raducanu joined forces in the doubles as the team’s No 1 and 2 players but that option has been thrown into doubt as the latter suffered an injury in her singles loss earlier in the day.
The world No 12 was visibly wincing and limping around the court during her 53-minute loss and needed to take an off-court medical time out at the conclusion of the first set for what is presumed to be foot blisters and later admitted she had to bathe her feet in “surgical solution” after feeling “redundant and helpless” on court. It likely leaves the British No 1 out of contention for the all-important decisive doubles match, with the No 2 player in Dart also expected to be slightly fatigued fresh off the back of her own two hour and 14 minute singles win.
It leaves Keothavong with just three players to choose from in Dart, Karthal and Swan, while the Czech team enjoys strong players in Bouzkova who has two doubles titles and is the world No 31 in the WTA doubles ranking. Former French Open finalist Vondrousova reached a career-high doubles ranking of 54 last month while Martincova is the current doubles world No 50 and has been as high as No 40.
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