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Canada won the Billie Jean King Cup for the first time on Sunday, clinching the women’s team event over Italy, thanks to wins by 18-year-old Marina Stakusic and then Leylah Fernandez in the singles matches, in Seville, Spain.
The 35th-ranked Fernandez secured the victory with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Italy’s Jasmine Paolini, the world’s 30th-ranked player, in the second singles match. The 21-year-old from Laval, Que., broke the Italian’s serve six times.
Paolini staved off championship point with a break of her own, down 5-2, but Fernandez then broke the Italian for a final time to secure the title.
Stakusic, from Mississauga, Ont., started the day with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Italy’s Martina Trevisan. The teenager jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the opening set, but Trevisan rallied, eventually grabbing a 5-4 lead. The Canadian, who is ranked 258th in the world, then won the next three games to take the set against the 43rd-ranked Italian.
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In the second set, Stakusic was broken by Trevisan in the opening game, but then broke back and eventually jumped out to a 3-1 lead, en route to her win.
The victory by the women follows the Canadian men’s win in the 2022 Davis Cup.
Fernadez and Gabriela Dabrowski upset Czechia’s Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova in a second-set tiebreaker 7-5, 7-6 (3) on Saturday as Canada advanced with a 2-1 overall victory in the semifinal of the women’s international team tennis tournament for the first time.