Nick Kyrgios yesterday\u00a0sent Australia through to the Davis Cup semi-finals with an emphatic straight-sets win over American Sam Querrey.<\/p>\n
Kyrgios prevailed 7-6 (7-4) 6-3 6-4 in Sunday\u2019s first reverses singles match, giving Australia an unbeatable 3-1 lead in the World Group quarter-final tie against the United States in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
It is just the second time in the last 11 years Australia have made this stage of the competition, with a trip to Belgium or a home semi-final tie against Italy to come in September.<\/p>\n
US captain Jim Courier threw another curve ball by sending world No.25 Querrey onto Pat Rafter Arena instead of No.15 Jack Sock, who was originally slated to face the in-form Kyrgios.<\/p>\n
Querrey had prevailed in his last meeting with Kyrgios in the semi-finals of February\u2019s Mexican Open and has the same type of power-serving style as the lanky John Isner, who troubled the 21-year-old on Friday before he turned the tables and claimed an opening day victory.<\/p>\n
However Kyrgios produced another commanding performance and showed more signs of his newfound ability to produce under pressure, breaking Querrey twice after the American led 4-1 as he attempted a comeback in the third set.<\/p>\n
He then wrapped up the two-hour victory with the last of his 21 aces, comfortably outserving Querrey, who hit only eight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a tough third set there, I was down a break and obviously a lot of emotions \u2013 I was close to the finish line,\u201d Kyrgios said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a lot of ebbs and flows, and I knew I hit a bit of a flat patch at the start of the third set.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut (with coach) Lleyton (Hewitt) on the side telling me to compete for every point, and obviously the crowd, it\u2019s easy to get up out here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyrgios also defended seven break points and stayed focused through moments when he could have previously lost his concentration.<\/p>\n
Just like he did against Isner, Kyrgios took a while to warm up and fell 3-0 down in the first set, double-faulting twice in his first service game.<\/p>\n
But he quickly found his groove, breaking back with a cracking forehand return in the seventh game before forcing and winning the tiebreak.<\/p>\n
Sam Groth replaced Jordan Thompson for the dead rubber, going down to John Isner in straight sets.<\/p>\n
Australia has not made the final of the Davis Cup since the last time they won it in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nick Kyrgios yesterday\u00a0sent Australia through to the Davis Cup semi-finals with an emphatic straight-sets win over American Sam Querrey. Kyrgios prevailed 7-6 (7-4) 6-3 6-4 in Sunday\u2019s first reverses singles match, giving Australia an unbeatable 3-1 lead in the World Group quarter-final tie against the United States in Brisbane. It is just the second time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5788,"featured_media":12652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12651","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\/12651","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=12651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}