TEAM Europe is on the verge of a landslide victory at the Laver Cup after another huge domination of Team World today. Winning all four matches, Europe extended its day one lead of 3-1 to 11-1 to move one match away from claiming victory. Four clashes remain tomorrow, with all four worth three points, meaning the only chance of a Team World victory is to clean sweep their opponents.

In the opening match of the day, Stefanos Tsitsipas broke through for his first win over Nick Kyrgios to open Europe’s account. Despite fierce resistance from the Australian, the world number three held firm to claim a straight sets win, 6-3 6-4. Winning 82 and 61 per cent of his first and second serve points, the Greek star also broke twice, and controlled play at the net with 13 more points (20-7), making up for the five less aces (3-8).

“I was really pumped. First of all, I had a team behind me, backing me up. It is important,” Tsitsipas said. “Coming in with a negative record, of course you want to change that and get a win, at least, which I’m very happy about.

In a surprise to no one, the battle of two of the world’s biggest servers produced two tiebreakers before the higher-ranked Alexander Zverev triumphed over home nation representative, John Isner. The German won 7-6 6-7 10-5 in the match, with 35 aces all up (22-13 to Isner) and surprisingly only one double fault (Isner). Neither player was broken, and coming into the super tiebreaker, both players had work 79 points such was the tightness of the contest. In the end though, Zverev broke away to win it 10-5 and add to Europe’s lead.

“In this format, playing against John is probably one of the toughest opponents that can be,” Zverev said. “He’s the best server of all time. He’s hitting the ball extremely hard, extremely well today. I played a pretty good match. Even the second set that I lost, I don’t think I did many things wrong. That just shows that the match was very high level, and I’m very happy to give Europe the lead.”

There were no such worries for US Open winner Daniil Medvedev, who completely took Denis Shapovalov apart in a 6-4 6-0 belting. The Canadian young gun has a winning record against Medvedev which was the choice for the clash, but the red-hot form of the world number two continued in Boston with the most comprehensive win of the tournament thus far. Medvedev produced four aces to zero, and won 81 and 68 per cent of his first and second serve points, breaking four times to nil in the big win.

“I played unbelievable tennis, especially in the second set,” Medvedev said. “I didn’t know what to expect because after the US Open, I didn’t play for a week-and-a-half. “I came here, practiced as much as I could the last three days. I didn’t hit many balls but, surprisingly, I was feeling good.”

The doubles duo featured three players who were already warmed up that day, as World duo Isner and Kyrgios took on Europe’s Tsitsipas and Andrey Rublev in a match that again went down to the wire. Team World looked good early, claiming a nail-biting first set 10-8 in a tiebreaker, before Europe hit back to win the second set and go 9-2 up the super tiebreak before saluting 6-7 6-3 10-4.

LAVER CUP DAY 2 RESULTS:

Stefanos Tsitsipas (EUR) defeated Nick Kyrgios (WOR) 6-3 6-4
Alexander Zverev (EUR) defeated John Isner (WOR) 7-6 6-7 10-5
Daniil Medvedev (EUR) defeated Denis Shapovalov (WOR) 6-4 6-0
A. Rublev/S. Tsitsipas (EUR) defeated J. Isner/N. Kyrgios (WOR) 6-7 6-3 10-4

Picture credit: Laver Cup