Netherlands will play Japan in the women's final and USA in the quad final at the 2021 BNP Paribas World Team Cup after the first of the semi-finals featured on the fourth day of the ITF's flagship wheelchair tennis team event in Alghero, Sardinia.

Meanwhile, with the last of the round-robin pool contests also taking place on Thursday, Netherlands, Spain, France and Argentina confirmed their places in Friday’s men’s singles semi-finals.

Both of the quad event semi-finals produced dramatic finishes as the winners of four of the last five quad doubles Paralympic gold medals delivered on the big stage once again, with USA’s Nick Taylor and David Wagner denying South Africa a unique place in World Team Cup history.

However, their last four contest had plenty more to recommend it after USA’s Bryan Barten opened with a 6-2, 6-4 singles victory over Danny Mohlamonyane.

Donald Ramphadi ensured that nine-time World Team Cup champions USA would not have a smooth passage to the final as the 28-year-old made his first career meeting with former ITF World Champion Wagner a winning one.

The South African world No.15 saved two set points in the opening set and made his move midway through the second set on his way to wrapping up a 7-6(4), 6-4 victory.

The gulf in experience between Mohlamonyane and Ramphadi and Taylor and Wagner mattered for little in the deciding doubles, with the South Africans coming into the contest with just three previous matches as partners, all of them in World Team Cup competition, one of those having been early this week in Sardinia and with all three previous matches having ended in defeat.

Match that against the record of three-time Paralympic champions and 11-time Doubles Masters champions Taylor and Wagner and the South African duo seemed to face an unenviable task.

But the prospect of becoming the first African team to reach a World Team Cup final in any of the four championship events became an ever-bigger prospect as Mohlamonyane and Ramphadi made a remarkable comeback from winning just one game in the opening set to force a deciding match tie-break.   

However, Taylor and Wagner crucially made the better star to the tie-break and ultimately completed a memorable 2-1 win for USA after taking the doubles 6-1 3-6 (10-5).

At the same time as the USA-South Africa semi-final was winding its way towards its thrilling conclusion, Koji Sugeno ensured another grandstand finish to Japan’s semi-final against Netherlands in the other semi-final.

Having only beaten Sam Schroder once in nine previous attempts, Sugeno turned his fortunes around in dramatic style in Sardinia to win their second singles contest in their semi-final encounter 0-6, 6-3, 6-3 to answer Niels Vink’s 6-1 6-1 win in the opening match against Kei Usami.  

But Schroder and Vink went on to demonstrate exactly why they are the reigning Paralympic and US Open champions and unbeaten since the Australian Open as they claimed the doubles against Shota Kawano and Sugeno 6-3 6-1 to seal a 2-1 Dutch victory that sets up a fascinating World Team Cup final schedule for Saturday.

Netherlands and Japan into women’s final

While both quad semi-finals twisted and turned towards their conclusions, there was maybe more of an inevitability to both women’s semi-finals as the top two seeded nations once again prevailed, earning Netherlands and Japan a fifth BNP Paribas World Team Cup final against each other and the fourth since 2010.

This year’s World Team Cup is the third that sees Jiske Griffioen, Diede de Groot and Aniek van Koot together in the same Dutch team, but it’s the first since all three have become world No.1 players, with De Groot the most recent of the trio to achieve that particular distinction.

Making her first World Team Cup appearance since 2016, Griffioen opened Netherlands’ semi-final campaign this year as the top seeds faced USA, with the 36-year-old defeating Shelby Baron 6-2 6-2.

De Groot’s second singles contest against Dana Mathewson and their second meeting at a World Team Cup brought a similar outcome, but a more comfortable win than De Groot enjoyed in Israel two years ago as she wrapped up a 6-3, 6-1 win and a 2-0 victory for Netherlands as nightfall drew in.  

With both women’s semi-finals taking a fraction of the time of the earlier quad semi-finals, the Baia di Conte Resort’s floodlights were once again brightly lit at the conclusion of Japan’s semi-final against Great Britain.

Rarely has a women’s World Team Cup semi-final featured two top-five ranked players from the same country who are not Dutch, but that was indeed the case for Japan as Momoko Ohtani opened the last four contest with a 6-0, 6-1 victory over Cornelia Oosthuizen.

Lucy Shuker provided slightly tougher opposition for Yui Kamiji, but a 2-0 victory for Japan was soon on the cards as the world No. 2 sealed Japan’s place in Saturday’s final 6-1, 6-2.

Top four seeds into men’s semis as Sri Lanka reach top eight

Netherlands remain on course for a possible full-house of World Team Cup titles in Sardinia, with the Dutch men leading the top four seeds through to the men’s semi-finals and the junior team from Netherlands still vying for a place in the semi-finals of their event.

Ruben Spaargaren, Maikel Scheffers and Tom Egberink shed a mere three games between them as Netherlands won their final round-robin Austria 3-0 to finish on top of  men’s Pool 1 and line up a semi-final against France.

The French, currently eight-time World Team Cup men’s champions, also ensured their place at the top of Pool 4 after completing a 3-0 win over Belgium that may not have been so comfortable, had Frederic Cattaneo not won his second singles match against Jef Vandorpe 7-5 7-6(5).

Argentina and Spain will contest the other men’s semi-final after Argentina finished top of Pool 3, courtesy of Ezequiel Casco, Gustavo Fernandez and Agustin Ledesma all playing their part in a 3-0 win over Korea Republic.

Second seeds Spain finished atop Pool 2 after Daniel Caverzaschi and Martin de la Puente won both their singles matches against Israel, but De la Puente’s victory was less than comfortable before he finally outlasted Adam Berdichevsky to win 6-2 6-7(4) 6-2.

Meanwhile, arguably the biggest cheer of the day came from the Sri Lankan men’s team, as the 15th seeds earned themselves a top eight World Team Cup finish for the first time after defeating seventh seeds Brazil 3-0.