With the United States and Italy meeting in the Fed Cup Final for the second year in a row, a change of location yielded a similar result. The defending champion Italians defeated the U.S. 3-1 in the final of the premier team competition in women\u2019s tennis, held Nov. 6-7 at Valley View Casino Center, formerly the San Diego Sports Arena. “I think we all knew we had to play our very, very best to have a chance to win this time,” said Mary Joe Fernandez, U.S. team captain. “We were playing against a very, very solid team with a lot of experience, a lot of variety and a lot of confidence. So we definitely knew we had to put matches together that were close to perfect.” The U.S. found itself in a 2-0 hole after the first day of the best-of-five final with straight-set losses in the two singles matches. Coco Vandeweghe lost to Francesca Schiavone (6-2, 6-4) and Bethanie Mattek-Sands lost to Flavia Pennetta (7-6, 6-2). Melanie Oudin kept the Americans alive on the second day, beating Schiavone 6-3, 6-1 in a dominant performance. Oudin\u2019s victory was one of the biggest of her young career. “This is the best I have played in a long time. I felt confident out there,” Oudin said. “I really played with no fear.” The U.S. team\u2019s celebration was short lived, however, as Pennetta beat Vandeweghe 6-1, 6-2 in the next match to clinch the Fed Cup for Italy. The Italians retained the crown with a 3-1 victory, their third title in five years. “I\u2019ve often said I\u2019m a very lucky captain because I have a great team and it\u2019s easy,” said Corrado Barazzuti, Italy team captain. “I\u2019m proud, but it\u2019s easy to be captain of this team because they are very strong.” The first round of the 2011 Fed Cup will be held next February. Italy will play Australia in Hobart, Australia, while the United States opens against Belgium in Antwerp, Belgium.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the United States and Italy meeting in the Fed Cup Final for the second year in a row, a change of location yielded a similar result. The defending champion Italians defeated the U.S. 3-1 in the final of the premier team competition in women\u2019s tennis, held Nov. 6-7 at Valley View Casino Center, formerly […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Italy defends Fed Cup title at sports arena","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11593,11561,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}