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FERNANDINA BEACH | Down two matches to none, needing a clean sweep to extend Romania’s run in the Billie Jean King Cup by Gainbridge, Ana Bogdan didn’t lose heart.
“I was watching the photos on Instagram, really, all the people who had qualified already,” she said. “I was like, we’re going to be there. We’re going to see our names there on those pictures, and it’s going to be Romania qualifying this time.”
With a bold lineup shakeup, nine hours of grit and an effort to remember from iron women Bogdan and Jaqueline Cristian, Romania roared back from the brink of elimination to deny the home-away-from-home Ukrainian squad 3-2 in Saturday’s Billie Jean King Cup qualifying round at Racquet Park at Omni Amelia Island.
Bogdan and Cristian, just barely removed from winning their reverse singles matches earlier in the afternoon — only a 30-minute interval for Cristian from her 2-hour, 18-minute contest — stunned Ukraine’s doubles specialists Lyudmyla Kichenok and Nadiia Kichenok 6-2, 7-6 (9-7) under the early-evening skies of Fernandina Beach.
“Both [singles] matches in a regular tournament would be great upsets,” Romania captain Horia Tecau said. “I’m very proud of the way they fought today.”
The comeback dashed the championship hopes of Ukraine, which had relocated its home match to Florida because of Russia’s invasion, but cued jubilation for a Romanian team that never before had erased a 2-0 deficit in a Billie Jean King Cup match.
Romania now heads to the World Cup of Tennis in Spain in the fall, the first time they’ve made that field since the premier international team tournament for women’s tennis adopted its present format in 2020.
They’ll be there alongside the United States, Australia, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Poland and Slovakia, as well as automatic qualifiers Canada, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic.
‘WORST DAY’: HEARTBREAKER FOR UKRAINE
When the sun rose Saturday over Amelia Island, Ukraine looked like a near-lock to make its temporary Florida homestand a winner. After Elina Svitolina and Lesia Tsurenko won their opening singles matches Friday, Ukraine needed to win only one of Saturday’s three matches.
“For us, it’s the worst day,” Ukraine captain Mikhail Filima said. “I don’t remember in my mind three matches in a row having a lot of chances where we cannot win.”
But Svitolina ran into a dogged opponent in Bogdan, who had lost her last seven games Friday but came out a whole new player to beat the top-ranked Ukrainian 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 in a 2-hour, 51-minute epic.
The third set alone consumed 76 minutes, with nine deuces in the second game and seven in the eighth. Bogdan fell behind 2-0 in the set and trailed 40-15 in the third game, but fought back to break Svitolina’s serve and never looked back.
“We had a lot of chances,” Filima said.
UNLIKELY DOUBLES DUO LIFTS ROMANIA
It was only moments after Cristian defeated Ukraine’s Tsurenko 2-6, 6-4, 6-4, when she learned her weekend wasn’t yet done.
Romania captain Tecau pulled the trigger on a daring decision, substituting the hot hands of Bogdan and Cristian for the planned doubled pairing of Anca Todoni and Mara Gae.
“They were on a high and confident and they were seeing the ball big,” Tecau said.
Never mind that Bogdan said that she had only played doubles with Cristian four or five times before, not since 2023 and never in the Billie Jean King Cup. Never mind that Ukraine’s Kichenok twins have been feared for years in doubles, with Lyudmyla winning the mixed doubles at Wimbledon last summer. And never mind that both had just played grueling, high-stakes singles matches.
“I kept going with the confidence that I had from the singles, and I think it was a big impulse to win the match,” Cristian said.
The Romanian connection this time: instant.
“For me, the challenge was to be active at the net, because it’s not something that I do every week in the tournaments,” Bogdan said. “So I said, you can do it, you can make it, just be there and focus.”
They exploited Ukrainian miscues to seize the first set, then Bogdan fought off two set points in a back-and-forth second set. Romania clawed back from a 4-1 hole in the tiebreaker, and even though Ukraine warded off two match points, Bogdan put away the winner.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Billie Jean King Cup: Romania 2-0 rally vs. Ukraine at Amelia Island