Australia will host the United States in a Davis Cup quarter-final in April after both countries surged to unbeatable leads in their first-round ties.<\/p>\n
Lleyton Hewitt\u2019s team dropped their first rubber of the weekend on Sunday when substitute Sam Groth lost to world No.54 Jiri Vesely 3-6 7-5 6-3 in an hour and 47 minutes.<\/p>\n
With little on the line at Kooyong, Groth was injected into the reverse singles in the place of Aussie No.1 Nick Kyrgios.<\/p>\n
The Victorian could have wrapped up a routine win when serving for the match at 5-4 in the second set, only to double fault twice to allow the Czech back into the match.<\/p>\n
Vesely played the best tennis of his weekend to take the second and third sets from Groth, who will now head to Launceston to play in a Challenger tournament.<\/p>\n
On Friday, debutant Jordan Thompson beat Vesely and world No.15 Kyrgios easily accounted for Jan Satral.<\/p>\n
When Groth paired with John Peers for Saturday\u2019s doubles rubber, Australia had won nine straight sets and were back in the quarter-finals for just the second time in 11 years.<\/p>\n
In Alabama on Sunday morning (AEDT), the Americans were less convincing in booking their place in the last eight.<\/p>\n
Against an under-strength Swiss team, Steve Johnson and Jack Sock needed two tiebreaks to beat lowly ranked pair of Adrien Bossel and Henri Laaksonen.<\/p>\n
Hewitt and Tennis Australia is yet to pick a venue for the April meeting.<\/p>\n
The tie is a rematch of last year\u2019s first-round meeting \u2013 won by the US 3-1 at Kooyong \u2013 and Hewitt is wary of Jim Courier\u2019s side.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tough ask,\u201d Hewitt said. \u201cWe lost to them in a pretty tight battle a year ago they\u2019re a tough team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re going to be really strong. They\u2019ve got four really good singles players and they can mix and match the doubles pairing pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Australia has hosting rights against their rivals after an agreement was made in 1999 to switch a tie to Boston as part of the Cup\u2019s centenary celebrations.<\/p>\n
That tie was Hewitt\u2019s first for Australia as a player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia will host the United States in a Davis Cup quarter-final in April after both countries surged to unbeatable leads in their first-round ties. Lleyton Hewitt\u2019s team dropped their first rubber of the weekend on Sunday when substitute Sam Groth lost to world No.54 Jiri Vesely 3-6 7-5 6-3 in an hour and 47 minutes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5788,"featured_media":12484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}