Croatia, which won the two singles against Switzerland in the final on Sunday in Nice, on clay, is guaranteed to win the Hopman Cup, a mixed team competition, even before the double, which will not be decisive.
Donna Vekic brought the first point to Croatia, which had eliminated Carlos Alcaraz’s Spain in pool, beating Céline Naef 6-3, 6-4.
In the first set, Naef made the first break at 1-1, but Vekic immediately reacted by unbreaking the next game. The set was resolved from 3-3, when the Croatian then lined up four games to win the first set, on a backhand in the net of Naef.
In the second, the 22nd player in the world, who served for the match 5 games to 4, won on a new unforced error from Naef (157th in the world), whose forehand ball this time landed well beyond the baseline.
Borna Coric (15th in the world) then won the men’s singles by beating, also in two sets, Leandro Riedi (160th) 6-1, 6-4.
After a smoothly led first set by Coric, Riedi offered greater resistance to his opponent in the second, where he quickly broke. But Coric managed to steal his serve at 3-4 to pick up the score 4-4, then won the next two games, and the match.
Croatia succeeds the winners of the Hopman Cup, a mixed competition where each match is played in three matches (1 ladies’ singles, 1 men’s singles) to the… Switzerland of Roger Federer, the previous nation titled in 2019.
It reappears this year after a four-year hiatus, and during the northern hemisphere summer after competing for thirty years in the austral summer, in Perth, Australia in January, before the Australian Open.