MARSEILLE: France’s Caroline Garcia hits a return to Camila Giorgi of Italy during their match in the Fed Cup World Group tie on Sunday.—AP
MARSEILLE: France’s Caroline Garcia hits a return to Camila Giorgi of Italy during their match in the Fed Cup World Group tie on Sunday.—AP

LONDON: Caroline Garcia put France into a Fed Cup semi-final clash with the Netherlands by defeating Italy’s Camila Giorgi 6-3, 6-4 in Marseille on Sunday.

The win, in the second of the reverse singles, gave the home team a winning 3-1 lead with just the doubles to come.

The Dutch had already completed a 3-0 sweep of last year’s beaten finalists Russia in Moscow.

Earlier Kristina Mladenovic had put France 2-1 up over the Italians by defeating Sara Errani 7-6 (7-4), 6-1.

France and Italy were tied at 1-1 after Saturday’s opening singles with Giorgi defeating Mladenovic 1-6, 6-4, 6-1 before Garcia levelled the tie by seeing off Errani 6-3, 7-5.

The Netherlands’ dream Fed Cup run continued as Kiki Bertens crushed Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-1, 6-4 in Moscow to send the Dutch into the semi-finals for the first time since 1997 as they built an unassailable 3-0 lead in the first reverse singles on Sunday.

Bertens had thumped Ekaterina Makarova 6-3, 6-4 on Saturday before little-known Richel Hogenkamp hung in for exactly four hours to tame twice Grand Slam champion Kuznetsova 7-6, 5-7, 10-8 in the longest ever Fed Cup match.

Also on Saturday, defending champions the Czech Republic were also in a dogfight in Cluj where they ended the day at 1-1 against Romania.

The top-ranked players for both countries were beaten as first Romanian world number three Simona Halep went down 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 6-2 to Karolina Pliskova then twice Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova missed the chance to put the Czechs 2-0 ahead when she was stunned 6-3, 6-4 by Monica Niculescu.

In Leipzig, Australian Open champion and world number two Angelique Kerber got Germany’s first round match against Switzerland back on track with a 6-1, 6-3 win over Timea Bacsinszky.

The Swiss had taken the lead in the tie when 18-year-old Belinda Bencic, the world number 11, swept past Andrea Petkovic, 6-3, 6-4.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2016

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