STEFANOS Tsitsipas won his singles contest before returning to court with Andrey Rublev to triumph in doubles as Team Europe swept all matches on Saturday and stood one victory away against Team World to maintain their iron grip on the Laver Cup.
In Saturday’s first match, world number three Tsitsipas did not leave the court against Nick Kyrgios but required some time to replace a worn-out pair of shoes during a 6-3, 6-4 win.
The Greek returned to the multipurpose indoor arena – also used by the NBA’s Celtics and NHL’s Bruins – with Russian world number five Rublev for the final match on the second day and rallied to beat the pairing of American John Isner and Australian Kyrgios 6-7(8), 6-3 (10-4).
Germany’s Alexander Zverev, ranked fourth in the world, also needed the 10-point match tiebreaker in the final set to tame big-serving Isner 7-6(5), 6-7(6), 10-5.
US Open champion Daniil Medvedev had a more comfortable outing in the night session against Canada’s Denis Shapovalov and won 6-4, 6-0.
Zverev and Rublev will look the settle the fate of the Laver Cup early on Sunday when they team up for the opening doubles match against Shapovalov and American Reilly Opelka.
Team Europe has won all three editions of the Laver Cup so far and were on the cusp of a fourth after the Bjorn Borg-captained side went ahead 11-1 at the end of second day’s play at Boston’s TD Garden.
The absence of Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic for this year’s event has proved to be no hindrance as Team Europe maintained a spotless record in the six singles matches over the first two days.
