Chile’s men’s team and Argentina’s women’s team booked their respective places at the 2020 BNP Paribas World Team Cup finals in Portugal after securing 2-0 victories on Sunday at the Americas Qualification in Buenos Aires.

Chile will now contest the men’s event at the ITF’s flagship wheelchair tennis team event for the first time since 2011. Meanwhile, Argentina will contest the women’s event at May’s finals for just the third time and for the second time in three year after delighting their home fans.

Chile’s Alexander Cataldo, Diego Perez and Jamie Sepluveda dropped just five games in ten sets of tennis as the top seeds dominated their pool ties against Canada and Uruguay to book their place in the men’s final.

Second seeds Colombia, previous winners of the men’s event at the Americas Qualification, had a much tougher time in the round-robin phase of the competition from the outset.

The opening day of play saw Colombia’s Eliecer Oquendo need all his experience to narrowly find his way past Costa Rica’s Jose Pablo Gil, a relative newcomer to the wheelchair game. However, Gil, a former world ranked ITF junior who took up wheelchair tennis in 2017 after being injured in a car accident less than a year earlier, finally succumbed 2-6 7-6 (7) 6-2 as Oquendo secured the middle rubber of a 3-0 win over Costa Rica.

Colombia’s place in Sunday’s final remained uncertain until the very end of the third and last day of pool contests. With Oquendo not lining up against Peru, it was down to Juan Sebastian Diaz and Manuel Quitian to secure a match tie break and the deciding doubles rubber 7-5 5-7 (10-4) against Ysabelino Apaza / Jesús Mayhua.

Oquendo returned for the final against Chile, but always looked likely to be up against it after Quitian dropped the opening singles rubber against Sepulveda 2-6 6-3 6-3. And so it proved, with 22-year-old world No. 32 Cataldo, the highest ranked men’s player in Buenos Aires, racing past Oquendo 6-0 6-1 to make it five wins in five matches against the Colombian and wrapping up Chile’s 2-0 victory over Colombia.

With Argentina’s men’s team having reached the semifinals of the 2019 BNP Paribas World Team Cup to earn direct entry for the finals of this year’s event, Andrea Medrano and Maria Florencia Moreno proved more than equal to the task in Buenos Aires as the host national’s women secured their place in Portugal after four days of intense competition.

The line-up of four nations guaranteed that the top two countries after the round-robin phase of he competition would meet again in the women’s final and the second day of competition brought what was to be the first of two contests between Argentina and Chile and the first of two contests between world No. 13 Moreno and world No. 20 Macarena Cabrillana.

Cabrillana went into their pool match having won four of her previous seven contests against Moreno, although the Argentinian claimed three of their four meetings last season. But having won their most recent contest last October, Cabrillana finished strongly after being a set down, closing out a 4-6 7-6(7) 6-1 win to take the tie into a deciding doubles rubber.

Ultimately it was Medrano and Moreno that took Argentina to a second successive pool victory and a 2-1 win over Chile after beating Cabrillana and Sofia Fuentes 6-4 6-1. But with both nations beating both Brazil and Peru, the same players lined up on Sunday for the final and the dawn of a new day brought some considerably different results.

A 6-0 6-1 winner over Chile’s Fuentes in their first singles contest of the week, Medrano met a much tougher challenge as she set about trying to give Argentina another early lead, eventually pulling through 3-6 6-3 6-1.

Meanwhile, Moreno again saw a one set lead disappear against Cabrillana. But with home support behind her the 30-year-old managed to avenge her earlier loss, earning a 6-2 0-6 6-2 win to wrap up Argentina’s 2-0 victory.

Medrano and Moreno will now hope to be lead Argentina’s challenge at the BNP Paribas World Team Cup finals in Vilamoura, Portugal on 4-10 May, as they bid to improve on an 11th place finish in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands in 2018.

With the BNP Paribas World Team Cup Americas Qualification now complete, Kenya hosts the African Qualification in Nairobi later this week, from 13 to 16 February, while the Asian and European Qualification events both take place in March.