Barty leads Aussies to Ukraine Fed Cup win
ASHLEIGH Barty and Casey Dellacqua put Australia into the Fed Cup World Group playoffs with victory in the deciding doubles rubber over Ukraine in Canberra yesterday.
Barty and Dellacqua eased past twin sisters Nadiia and Lyudmyla Kichenok 6-3, 6-4 after Nadiia had levelled the tie with a singles win over Daria Gavrilova.
Australia will now move into the World Group playoffs in April, putting them one win away from the Fed Cup’s topeight nations for the first time since 2015, while Ukraine will face a World Group II play-off.
Barty was Australia’s leading light with her third victory of the weekend after beating both Lyudmyla Kichenok and Marta Kostyuk in her singles matches.
Australia’s number one singles player Barty had defeated Kostyuk 6-2, 6-3 to put her country on the cusp of qualification only for Gavrilova to lose the fourth singles rubber.
World No26 Gavrilova completed a dismal weekend when she went down for the second time despite winning the opening set against unranked Nadiia Kichenok 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.
Few had given the depleted Ukrainian team a chance when they arrived without world number three Elina Svitolina and their next five top-ranked singles players.
Milestone for Venus
Meanwhile, defending Fed Cup champs the United States were one point from advancing to the semis on Saturday after a comfortable victory for Venus Williams, with sister Serena waiting in the wings for her much anticipated comeback.
S e ven-t i me Gr a nd Sla m winner Venus Williams needed an hour and 19 minutes to brush aside her 124th-ranked Dutch opponent Arant xa Rus 6-1, 6-4.
A more laboured win followed for the mercurial CoCo Vandeweghe, who lost her first set to Richel Hogenkamp and broke a racket in frustration during the second before fighting back to a 4-6, 7-6 (8/6), 6-3 victory.
They were both cheered from the bench by Serena Williams, who was poised to make her own return to the sport yesterday after a year away and the birth of her daughter Alexis Olympia, who attended in the arms of her father Alexis Ohanian one row behind.
Venus’s win came in her 1,000th career match and her 22nd singles appearance in a tournament she first played in 1999, but she insisted milestones were far from her mind.
“I don’t rea lly k now about t hese milestones when t hey happen,” she sa id. “It’s just great to be play ing the game t hat I love – not rea lly going for milestones, but t hen t hey happen.”