Following the doubles victory of Juan-Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah, Colombia has overcome Sweden to reach the country’s first-ever Davis Cup finals.
Sweden had history on their side, having reached the finals twelve times before, but it couldn’t stop the seven-time winning Scandinavian nation from conceding a 3-0 lead on Saturday in triumphant scenes at Palacio de los Deportes in Bogotá. Despite an early break, Cabal and Farah swept past Swedish rivals Markus Eriksson and Robert Lindtstedt in straight sets 6-3 6-4 to take Colombia to the finals for their first ever appearance.
Earlier, Santiago Giraldo and Daniel Galán took on the Swedish Ymer brothers Elias and Mikael respectively and were able to win convincingly in straight sets. As icing on the cake, Alejandro Gonzalez downed Elias Ymer 6-3, 6-3 to give Colombia a 4-0 lead.
Following a victory that had been 51 years in the making–Colombia has reached this stage six times since 2010 but were never able to advance–Colombian Davis Cup captain Pablo Gonzalez said that “the dream is a reality right now.
Colombia now join Serbia, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Russia, Belgium, Chile, Kazakhastan and Japan as these countries also had triumphant weekends.
Croatia, France, United States, Spain, Argentina and Britain have automatically qualified and will join the qualifiers from this weekend for the big event in November in Madrid.
Argentina is the only Latin American nation to have won the Davis Cup and Colombia will look to emulate their counterpart’s victorious 2016 run come November.
