Day 5 of United Cup 2023 was fully packed with plenty of action on both men and women sides. Especially the men matchups ensured a lot of high quality duels. The highlight of the day was inevitably the match between Rafael Nadal and Alex De Minaur. Spanish grand champion wanted to break through his poor run of recent losses and started the match well, finding some confidence and winning the first set 6-3 with a few spectatular points in his tally. Then, his game collapsed, and local man crushed Nadal surprisingly 6-1 in second set. De Minaur was also the first one to break in the decider, winning Nadal's service game and taking the 3-2 lead. Spaniard has responded quickly, but it not prevented him from losing the match. He got broken to love in 11th game and De Minaur crossed the line without losing a point in his final service game. It is Nadal's 6th lose out of last 7 games - the worst run like this for 18 years.
The other exciting match-up on paper was Alexander Zverev against Taylor Fritz. German is still trying to find his form back after horrific injury caught up in last year's Roland Garros. It was not this time though, once current US number one defeated him easily 6-4 6-1. Team USA capitalized on that with another win from Madison Keys, who managed to defeat Julia Niemeier in straight sets as well.
Iga Swiatek's match against Belinda Bencic was the most interesting event on women side. The opening battle of Poland - Switzerland tie seemed to be something worth to wait for, as current WTA ranking's leader was eager to take the revenge for the lose against Bencic, which took place in US Open 2021. Moreover, Bencic current form is outstanding, as she won 5 games in a row before today, including 3 important wins during last November's BJK Cup Finals, when she strongly contributed in the title winning campaign of her Swiss team. Bencic resisted Swiatek's level much more effective that Yulia Putintseva two days ago. She lost the first set with only one break down (6-3). Swiatek was playing with confidence, facing only one breakpoint during her service games. She was also the first one to break in second set, but did not manage to serve out her win. The tiebreak was needed to conclude 2nd set, but Swiatek held her nerves and opened the score for Poland defeating Bencic 6-3 7-6. The match against Poland and Switzerland will be completed tomorrow with another exciting pairings - Hubert Hurkacz vs Stan Wawrinka and Magda Linette vs Jil Teichmann.
Croatia continues their great run during United Cup. They are flawless after 7 matches winning all of them. After whitewashing Argentina on Sunday, they lead 2-0 against France today. Donna Vekic, who clearly comes back to the range of top players won her duel with Alize Cornet 6-4 6-3.
