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Despite falling to defeat against Cameron Norrie on Saturday, Rafael Nadal is looking to take the positives from his opening performance of the season at the United Cup. The World No. 2, who won the first set in Sydney, was competing for the first time since November, when he played at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin.

“It was not a disaster at all,” Nadal said. “I can do things better, and I need to do it. But as I said, I have not had many matches. I think he played the first match two days ago. I think that's an advantage, especially if you win the match the way that he did.

“And then I need to be a little bit faster physically, a little bit more solid, some fewer mistakes and making better decisions at some point, playing a little bit longer. I think there is a way to improve, but I have time before the Australian Open starts in two weeks. But either way, we still focus on this competition. Let's support now Nuria [Parrizas Diaz], and then let's see what can happen, because we need to win this tie to keep having any chances.”

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The 36-year-old is spearheading Team Spain at the United Cup this week, a new mixed-teams event held across Brisbane, Perth and Sydney. Nadal, who is teaming with WTA star Paula Badosa and Montreal champion Pablo Carreno Busta, has enjoyed the experience so far.

Tributes to Pele have continued to pour in, including from some of the biggest stars in tennis, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Federer once met Pele and exchanged memorabilia with the football legend.

“Thank you for inspiring millions of sports fans and athletes,” Federer wrote on Instagram. “I count myself so fortunate to have met you and gotten a chance to learn and look up to you. You were one of the first true global sporting icons. Rest in peace King Pele ??”

Djokovic also paid tribute to the Brazilian icon on Instagram stories. Another star who posted was Nadal.

Cameron Norrie had never won a set in his four previous meetings against Rafael Nadal prior to their clash at the United Cup. However, the World No. 14 turned the tables in dramatic style Saturday when he overcame the 36-year-old 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in a statement win to give Team Great Britain a 1-0 lead against Team Spain in Sydney.

In front of a capacity Ken Rosewall Arena crowd, the 27-year-old timed the ball cleanly off both wings, hitting through Nadal with his flat backhand to triumph after two hours and 45 minutes.

"It was a great match," Norrie said. "At the beginning of the match he was winning some of the tricky points. Him coming to the net and drop-shotting me. I managed to stay tough in the longer rallies and embraced the situation. I think by ranking it is the biggest win of my career."

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Norrie now holds a 2-0 record on the new season, having defeated Australian Alex de Minaur in his opening match at the new mixed-teams event. Great Britain, led by captain Tim Henman, won that opening Group D tie 3-2. Katie Swan will aim to double her nation’s lead when she faces Spaniard Nuria Parrizas Diaz in the last match of the day in Sydney.

World No. 1 Iga Swiatek showed no signs of rust in her first match of the 2023 season, defeating Yulia Putintseva 6-1, 6-3 at the United Cup. The victory gave second seed Poland a 1-0 lead over Kazakhstan in Brisbane. 

Poland's No. 2 men's singles player, Daniel Michalski, will look to build on Swiatek's efforts when he faces Timofey Skatov to close out the day's play on Pat Rafter Arena.  

With Polish great Agnieszka Radwanska looking on from the captain's box, Swiatek needed just three games before finding the rhythm and range that made her the runaway 2022 Hologic WTA Tour Player of the Year. Putintseva earned an early break point chance in Swiatek's first game, but the Pole coolly erased it with pinpoint accuracy. 

"I'm pretty happy with my performance," Swiatek said. "First matches of the season are always rusty. I was happy that in the important moments I was really composed." 

Under pressure again while serving at 1-1, 0/30, Swiatek found another gear to reel off 12 consecutive points to build a 4-1 lead. Having made six unforced errors in the first three games, Swiatek would make just one for the rest of the set, pocketing the set after 27 minutes. 

Bringing ATP and WTA stars together at the United Cup may be something new, but many of the cross-Tour friendships within the 16 competing teams have considerably longer histories.

Take Team Croatia’s Borna Coric and Donna Vekic, who have known each other so long they can barely recall their first meeting.

“I think it was almost 20 years ago, so I don’t remember a lot, but we’ve known each other basically since we started playing tennis,” WTA No. 67 Vekic told ATPTour.com this week in Perth. “We’ve been together for our whole career.”

Coric retains a few more memories of the pair’s early days in their homeland.

“I remember her, we were playing under-10s in Zagreb,” said the No. 26 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, before smiling and starting to tease his teammate about her younger self. “I didn’t like her much back then actually, back then she was very nervous, very arrogant as well, but now she changed. So, I’m just enjoying spending time here with her and the whole team.”

Alison Van Uytvanck kicked off Belgium's United Cup campaign with a hard-fought 6-1, 3-6, 6-2 win over Bulgaria's Isabella Shinikova in one hour and 43 minutes.

Five-time Hologic WTA Tour titlist Van Uytvanck had entered as the favourite against No.381-ranked Shinikova and lived up to that status over a dominant first half-hour. She rattled through eight of the first 10 games, going up a break for 2-1 in the second set as Shinikova double faulted twice.

But Shinikova, who showed little sign of the leg injury that had beset her during a three-set defeat to Greece's Despina Papamichail on Day 1, struck back in style. Introducing more variety into her game, the 31-year-old added subtle chips and drop shots to her aggressive tactics to turn the second set around.

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Van Uytvanck's error count increased from six to 20 as she struggled to adjust. Striking winners off both wings with real panache, Shinikova took five of the next six games to level the match and set her sights on a sixth career Top 100 win.

Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev could be headed for an early-season showdown after both landed in the top half of the Adelaide International 1 draw. Top-seeded Djokovic and third-seeded Medvedev could meet in the semi-finals of the ATP 250, which features four Top 10 players.

In the bottom half, which contains four players in the Top 15 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, second seed Felix Auger-Aliassime is seeded to meet Rolex Paris Masters champion Holger Rune in the quarter-finals, with a potential meeting against fourth seed Andrey Rublev or sixth seed Jannik Sinner in the semi-finals.

First up, Djokovic faces a first-time meeting with World No. 65 Frenchman Constant Lestienne, with the winner to play either Australian wild card Jordan Thompson or Frenchman Quentin Halys in the second round.

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The first seed Djokovic could meet is seventh-seeded Canadian Denis Shapovalov, who opens against a qualifier.

World No. 15 Beatriz Haddad Maia improved her United Cup record to 2-0 after defeating Malene Helgo of Norway 6-4, 6-2 on Day 3 in Brisbane. The victory kicked off Brazil's tie with Norway, giving the Brazilians a 1-0 lead.

World No. 166 Felipe Meligeni Alves will try to extend Brazil's lead against World No. 343 Viktor Durasovic in the No. 2 men's singles match later on Saturday.

Haddad Maia has enjoyed a dominant start to her season, having lost just two games to Martina Trevisan of Italy on Day 1.

"I entered the court trying to improve my game, to do better things than I couldn't do two days before," Haddad Maia said. "I was trying to be as aggressive as I could. I was happy that I was patient and giving myself chances one more time, even if I was missing. I was happy with the way I was thinking in this match."

Read Feature: Team Brazil Pays Tribute To Pele

Jiri Lehecka equalled the biggest win of his career by Pepperstone ATP Ranking Saturday when he upset World No. 12 Alexander Zverev 6-4, 6-2 to give Team Czech Republic a 1-0 lead in its tie against Team Germany at the United Cup.

The 21-year-old was pumped up throughout the one-hour, 34-minute clash on Ken Rosewall Arena, producing a clean-hitting display to outlast Zverev in the baseline exchanges. The World No. 81 broke four times and looked sharp at the net, consistently moving forward effectively to finish points.

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The 2022 Next Gen ATP runner-up Lehecka, who also defeated then-World No. 12 Denis Shapovalov en route to the semi-finals in Rotterdam last season, lost against Taylor Fritz in his opening match of the season earlier this week.

However, he has given his nation the perfect start to its tie against Germany as it looks to bounce back from its Group C tie defeat against Team United States. Marie Bouzkova will look to double her nation's lead when she faces Jule Niemeier in the second match of Day 3 in Sydney.

Day 3 of the United Cup features two of its biggest stars, 22-time Grand Slam singles champion Rafael Nadal and WTA No.1 Iga Swiatek and 

Both players are coming off memorable 2022 seasons, both on and off the court. And they will be challenged, they say, to move forward after those successes. Nadal — who won the Australian Open and Roland Garros this past year — and his wife, Maria, welcomed their first child, Rafael Nadal Perello, back in October.

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Nadal, 36, now the all-time leader with 22 men's major singles titles, took a break after losing to Frances Tiafoe in the fourth round of the US Open. He was asked about his new role of father.

“Well,” he said, smiling, “the first event I played as a father without the baby with me, I lost [Paris] first round. Second event, travelling with the baby, I was out of the [Nitto ATP Finals] group stage. At the end I won my last match, but I need to keep improving, no? Easy.”

Corentin Moutet ended his 2022 season in style.

Just two months after reaching the fourth round of the US Open for the first time, the 23-year-old Frenchman notched impressive three-set wins against Borna Coric and Cameron Norrie to reach the third round at November's Rolex Paris Masters. That run propelled him to a career-high No. 51 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.

Now, the entertaining lefty joins TopCourt to demonstrate the sort of shots and technique that have enabled him to neutralize bigger hitters and turn a game of power into a game of chess. From his experiences leaving home as a young teen to chase his dream of becoming a pro, to questioning his desire to continue the pursuit, Moutet’s journey is a valuable lesson in perseverance.

Technique: Moutet teaches two of his most masterful shots — the backhand slice and the forehand lob. In his backhand slice class, Corentin teaches you how to keep the ball low and angling away from his opponent. In his forehand lob class, he shares how he disrupts taller opponents by changing the speed and rhythm of a point.

Drills: Moutet brings three of his favourite drills to his TopCourt class. The first focuses on neutralising a point, the second on dictating a point with your forehand, and the third on executing points at the net.

Mastery of multitasking could hold the key for success at the inaugural United Cup.

Six of the 18 nations in the mixed-teams event are led by ‘playing captains’, including four in Perth. Team Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov is one of the stars trying to balance supporting their teammates with their own match preparation in the Western Australian capital.

“It's a little different; I'm not gonna lie,” said eight-time ATP Tour champion Dimitrov. On Thursday he supported his teammate Isabella Shinikova courtside as she took on Team Greece’s Despina Papamichail, while simultaneously preparing for the following match on the RAC Arena schedule, his own singles clash against Stefanos Tsitsipas.

“I was in and out [of the team box],” said Dimitrov, who does have previous experience as a playing captain from the 2020 ATP Cup. “I had to eat some and rest some and tie my shoes and prepare. Usually, I have all that time to do things by myself for myself, and now it was in a completely different rhythm for me, which was okay. I mean, I did that in the ATP Cup.

“Obviously it takes a little bit more energy than usual, but I felt that I was managing it quite well, again, even with my match. So, it was a very close call. It's something that just you have got to deal with, I guess.”

The world mourned Friday after learning football icon Pele had passed away. The news hit close to home for Brazil’s United Cup team, which battled hard to honour the legend in Brisbane.

“I think everybody, not just us, but Brazil and the whole world is going to miss him,” Luisa Stefani said after her mixed doubles win alongside Rafael Matos. “He’s got a great personality and he’s a great ambassador for football, but also for sport in general. He managed to get people united, which I think is what we’re trying to do with this tournament.”

Stefani added: “We played today to honour him and to celebrate him because that’s what he did. He played with his heart, he showed love to everybody, so that’s what Team Brazil is going to do not only today but for the rest of the tournament and the rest of the year. So thanks Pele, rest in peace.”

"We played today to honour him and to celebrate him." @Luisa__Stefani with beautiful words of tribute to Pele ??#UnitedCup pic.twitter.com/a61CARkTBq

Thiago Monteiro, Brazil's No. 1 men's singles player, reflected on Pele’s impact on his day-to-day life.

WTA Finals champion Caroline Garcia kicked off the new season as she had left off the last one: in phenomenal form. The World No.4 dispatched Nadia Podoroska 6-2, 6-0 in just 64 minutes on Friday to give France an unassailable 3-0 lead over Argentina in the United Cup.

Garcia had only conceded three games against Podoroska in their sole previous meeting, in the second round of Monterrey 2017, and went one better this time as she racked up 24 winners in just 14 games.

Podoroska had a rough start to the match, with two foot faults contributing to a pair of double faults in the opening game the second down break point. Garcia needed little help to impose her swashbuckling strategy on the Argentinian, though.

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Swarming the net at every opportunity, including straight off several returns, the 29-year-old won 18 out of 24 points in the forecourt. She conceded only two points behind her first serve and never faced a break point.

Instead of ‘Captain Stan’, call Stan Wawrinka ‘Captain Clutch’.

Wawrinka clinched Switzerland’s first United Cup tie win on Friday when he defeated Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik 6-3, 7-6(3) in the No. 1 men’s singles match. Switzerland holds an insurmountable 3-0 lead with No. 2 women’s singles and mixed doubles still to come.

“I was super happy when they announced this United Cup, to have the chance to play for the Swiss with my teammates and everybody and to play here in Brisbane. Tonight was a great level,” Wawrinka said. “I’m super happy with the way I was playing. I’ve been working really hard to be back at a better level and I’m happy with the performance today.”

Entering the match, former World No. 3 Wawrinka was 0-2 in his ATP Head2Head series with Bublik, one of the trickiest shotmakers on the ATP Tour. But the Swiss star was sharp in his first match of the season, trading his captain’s hat for his racquet in a one-hour, 31-minute victory.

Wawrinka, who spent all of Thursday evening cheering for and providing guidance to his team, was locked in from the start against the big-serving Kazakhstani. The 37-year-old did not lose his serve in the match and did not allow Bublik to control the rhythm of their clash.

Harriet Dart defeated Maddison Inglis 6-4, 6-4 to seal a win for Great Britain over Australia at the United Cup. Team GB will move to the top of Group D and prepare to face Spain next.

Great Britain came into Day 2 with a 2-0 lead over the host nation after Cameron Norrie and Katie Swan posted straight-set wins on Day 1. Ranked No. 98 and playing in the No. 1 position for Great Britain, Dart seized her chance to clinch the tie by winning the coveted third point to build an unassailable 3-0 lead.

"Maddy played really great tennis today and I had to work for it," Dart said. "First match of the year, I was really nervous, but the crowd were great."

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World No. 180 Inglis was a late substitution in singles after Australian No.1 Ajla Tomljanovic withdrew from the match due to a left knee injury. With Captain Sam Stosur urging her on, the 24-year-old from Perth acquitted herself well and, after a slow start, consistently challenged Dart from the baseline.

Frances Tiafoe celebrates winning first set in Sydney on Friday.

Frances Tiafoe and Tomas Machac ahead of their United Cup match.

Petra Kvitova in action on Friday.

Petra Kvitova celebrates her victory in Sydney.

Matteo Berrettini competes for Team Italy on Friday in Brisbane.

Team Greece have sealed the first victory of Group A at the United Cup in Perth after Maria Sakkari defeated Viktoriya Tomova 6-3, 6-2 in one hour and 27 minutes, giving her team an unassailable 3-0 lead over Team Bulgaria.

WTA No.6 Sakkari had lost to Tomova in their first meeting, over six years ago in the 2016 Szeged ITF W50 final. But she had gained revenge in the second round of Wimbledon 2022, and once again showed how far she has come in establishing herself as a solid Top 10 player.

The first half of the opening set was tightly contested, with Tomova's defensive skills and changes of pace drawing Sakkari into a number of extended exchanges. Indeed, it was the WTA No.90 who captured the first break, going up 2-1 as Sakkari leaked a double fault and errors on the forehand and at net.

But Sakkari responded with an immediate break back thanks to aggressive returning, and the pair remained neck-and-neck until the seventh game. After Sakkari had held for 4-3, Tomova required a medical timeout and returned with her lower left leg strapped.

On resumption, the Bulgarian's attempts to shorten the points were a contrast to her earlier successful tactics and did not pay off. Sakkari broke for 5-3 by quickly tracking down a Tomova dropshot, and then converted her first set point with a forehand winner.

Former World No. 3 Dominic Thiem was awarded a main draw wild card into the Australian Open, the tournament announced Friday.

World No. 102 Thiem, who is continuing his comeback from a wrist injury, has enjoyed plenty of success at Melbourne Park. In 2020, the Austrian earned three consecutive Top 10 wins — including an upset of first seed Rafael Nadal — en route to the final at the season’s first major. Only Novak Djokovic was able to stop him in the championship match.

Thiem owns a 19-8 record at the Australian Open and has advanced to at least the Round of 16 in four of his past five appearances.

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Tournament organisers also announced main draw wild cards for American Christopher Eubanks and Frenchman Luca Van Assche.

Matteo Berrettini made a good start to his season Friday and in doing so put Italy in position to close out its tie against Brazil at the United Cup.

The Italian powered past Brazilian No. 1 Thiago Monteiro 6-4, 7-6(7) to give his country a 2-1 lead. Lucia Bronzetti will now try to clinch the Group E tie in the No. 2 women’s singles match when she faces Laura Pigossi.

“Pretty happy I have to say. It’s been a long time since I’ve played my last singles match, so I didn’t know what to expect. I think the level was pretty high,” Berrettini said. “I’m happy for my performance, but obviously when you play in these kind of competitions the most important thing is to get the win and bring a point for the team and that’s why I’m even happier.”

Berrettini needed two hours and 51 minutes to defeat Monteiro last year on the clay of Rio de Janeiro. Their clash Friday was also tough, but after saving two set points in the second set the favoured Italian used his bigger game to hit his way to victory in Brisbane after one hour and 56 minutes.

Monteiro battled valiantly for his country, hitting a tremendous forehand passing shot at one moment late in the second set that drew raucous applause from the Pat Rafter Arena crowd. He also benefitted from the encouragement of his Team Zone, with captain Rafael Paciaroni and coach Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo urging him on throughout.