Elise Mertens secured Belgium’s victory over Canada with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 win over Victoria Mboko. Her two-hour-and-five-minute triumph followed a stunning 6-4, 6-2 victory by Zizou Bergs against world No. 5 Felix Auger-Aliassime, putting Belgium on the brink of the quarterfinals.
Despite winning the tie, Belgium still need a clean sweep to advance. If Canada win the mixed doubles match, they will progress to the knockout rounds.
Mertens rode a stellar serving performance to take a one-set lead, holding at love in each of her first four service games and breaking Mboko to love in the sixth game.
Though Mboko showed fighting spirit, Mertens earned the decisive break of serve in the fourth game of the final set from a 30-0 deficit, and won a staggering 93 per cent of points behind her first serve overall, according to the WTA.
Earlier, Bergs secured his second career top-10 victory in one hour and 28 minutes against Auger-Aliassime, having also defeated then world No. 9 Andrey Rublev 10 months ago in Miami.
“I actually forgot this was my second top-10 win, so that’s really huge, especially with such a convincing way of playing,” Bergs said.
“I just looked at it as a match. This is a little different format, so we’re still down. We still have to win a lot of matches today, so that was more the focus. Today, I just had to get the job done,” he added.
Auger-Aliassime, however, enjoyed the best season of his career in 2025, reaching the US Open semifinals and competing at the Nitto ATP Finals. He looked sharp in his first match of the season against Zhang, but was unable to dominate in the same way against Bergs, who saved all five break points he faced.
-IANS
