VANCOUVER: Daniel Nestor and Vasek Pospisil outlasted Japan's Go Soeda and Yasutaka Uchiyama in five sets on Saturday to put Canada one point from victory in their Davis Cup tie.
Nestor and Pospisil downed Soeda and Uchiyama 7-5, 2-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 to give the hosts a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five World Group first-round tie.
That means 2014 US Open runner-up Kei Nishikori, ranked fourth in the world, will be fighting to keep Japan alive when he takes on world number six Milos Raonic in Sunday's first reverse singles match.
Raonic and Nishikori both won on Friday to set themselves up for the marquee clash.
Raonic overpowered 85th-ranked Tatsuma Ito 6-2, 6-1, 6-2, while Nishikori defeated Pospisil 6-4, 7-6 (7/5), 6-3.
Nishikori owns a 4-2 career record against Raonic. They exchanged a pair of fourth-round Grand Slam victories in 2014, and Nishikori beat Raonic in the 2012 and 2014 Tokyo finals and in the 2014 ATP Madrid Masters round of 16.
Raonic took their most recent meeting in a Brisbane semi-final.
If Nishikori prevails, Pospisil will take on Ito in the final singles rubber to decide the tie.
Canada are out for a bit of Davis Cup revenge against Japan.
The Canadians rolled to the 2013 Davis Cup semi-finals before falling to Serbia at Belgrade but last year lost 4-1 to Japan at Tokyo, falling to 0-6 all-time against Japan in Davis Cup play.
Beating Canada last year launched Japan into the second round of the World Group for the first time, but with Nishikori injured and absent in the quarter-finals, they were hammered 5-0 by then-defending champion Czech Republic.
The winner of the tie will face either defending champion Switzerland or Belgium in the quarter-finals in July.
Belgium were 2-1 up on the Swiss in Liege heading into Sunday.
Comments
Comments are closed.