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2024 Billie Jean King Cup Finals recap for Australia: Outclassed by Slovakia despite some fightback by Kimberly Birrell 2-0 with no doubles match required

by Sports Benches

There was some Tennis after all to finish off the Sunday night and into the early hours of Monday from Malaga in Spain with the Billie Jean King Cup involving Australia. 

The good news is that they had the early round Finals bye to begin straight from the Quarter-Finals tie v Slovakia, but the bad news is that the Aussies were outclassed following a 2-0 series straight defeat. 

Yes, we saw some brilliant tennis at times from Kimberly Birrell including that 2nd set fight to open up the deciding set while it was good seeing Ajla Tomjlanovic back in action in a while after a long layoff from injury. 

It just wasn’t enough unfortunately to fight on another day even a 1-1 tie might have encouraged our doubles pair of Ellen Perez & Daria Saville to live on another day – at least on the Tennis court that could’ve seen them face Great Britain in the semis that will begin tomorrow night.

Alex De Minaur’s British girlfriend Katie Boulter is having an excellent impact so far for Team GB and so does her team-mate Emma Raducanu who won the US Open back in 2021. Who knows what could happen and they could do in the hope of going one step further towards Wednesday’s Final for that one prestigious trophy named after our female Tennis icon (Billie Jean King) against either Poland or Italy.

Want more of De Minaur? The Davis Cup Finals week will then begin this Thursday to Sunday starting with the USA & he too would love to go big and go home with the Davis Cup trophy for our Aussie team. 

Would’ve it been lovely if Katie won the BJK Cup and Alex won the Davis Cup for their won countries? That would be another couple goals success story of Tennis in 2024 after they won three other weekly tournaments all within the same time during that same weekend together.

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2022 French Open: Novak Djokovic advances into the 3rd Round with a straight sets win v Alex Molcan

by Sports Benches

It was an easy start by Novak Djokovic while Slovakian Alex Molcan began to make up some lost time after he was beaten easily in the opening set. However, Molcan’s late fightback in the 3rd set wasn’t enough to save his French Open campaign, as Djokovic closed out this Round 2 tie in straight sets with the win; 6-2, 6-3, 7-6 via 7-4 tiebreaker.

Congratulations to Djokovic who is through to Round 3 tomorrow against Aljaz Bedene from Slovenia. He was simply outstanding for the majority during these two opening sets. Although he had to overcome a competitive duel in the third while Molcan tried to keep this game alive, but Djokovic used the lifeline well going into the tiebreak and capped off in style with the win. Brilliant response there to hold back his opponent in a couple of areas that helped Novak being prepared to fight hard & show grand slam quality on the court.

Meanwhile, Moclan played some brilliant shots that earned him a few games, especially when he tried to stay in this fight which went all the way through the tiebreak in the 3rd set. But a poor opening set spell alongside a couple of gaps with his inconsistency just couldn’t him challenge the elite stature of Djokovic in the end. He came off a great run recently in the ATP Tour despite a couple of runner-up losses so far in 2022. But there’s still room for improvement though at age 24 where his best grand slam appearance was the US Open 3rd Round last year, as well as being the 38th ranked singles’ player right now.

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