By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday January 8, 2020
Team Argentina stormed past Croatia to claim the top spot in Group E on Wednesday night in Sydney. Argentina needed a sweep to stay alive in the ATP Cup and they were provided hope when Guido Pella rolled past Marin Cilic 7-6(1) 6-3. Diego Schwartzman followed suit by rolling past Borna Coric 6-2 6-2 but Team Argentina still had work to do.
Enter Andres Molteni and Maximo Gonzalez, who took charge of a deciding tiebreaker to send Argentina through.
Argentina wins Group E as a result of its head-to-head victory over Croatia—the two nations each finished group play with a 2-1 record. Team Argentina will face Russia in the quarterfinals at Sydney, the two nations will face off in Thursday’s night session.
Here is the quarterfinal lineup for the inaugural ATP Cup:
Thursday’s schedule will feature host Australia against Great Britain in the day session, followed by the aforementioned Argentina v Russia tie in the evening. The Russians, led by Daniil Medvedev and Karen Khachanov, are one of four teams—Serbia, Russia, Spain and Australia—that went undefeated during group play.
Two teams—Argentina and Spain—did not drop a single match.
On Friday in Sydney, Serbia will face Canada and Spain will face Belgium.
Spain took out Japan 3-0 on Thursday with the Japanese just needing one victory to qualify for the quarterfinals. Ben McLachlan and Go Soeda fell to Rafael Nadal and Pablo Carreno Busta in a match tiebreak.
Canada and Belgium were the two highest-ranked second place teams. Belgium qualified on its 6-3 match record, while Canada had the best set winning percentage of six other teams—Bulgaria, Japan, Italy, South Africa, Croatia and Canada—to have a 5-4 match record. Canada won 60 percent of its sets.