Lisa Raymond will remember Portoroz for a long, long time. Distraught after losing her opening match to Tina Pisnik on Saturday, the American was just two games from defeat against Katerina Srebotnik in the fourth rubber of this Fed Cup first round tie, but she found something from somewhere to fight back. She put much of the achievement down to the support of her bench, as her team-mates - Venus Williams, Martina Navratilova and coaching staff Zina Garrison and Billie-Jean King - roared her on from the sidelines. Raymond broke the Slovenian’s serve to level the match at 4-all, and then again to win the rubber and build and unassailable 3-1 lead for the United States. It was a sweet way to finish matters for the American. “Everyone said today is a new day, and it’s funny because it is,” said Raymond. “I don’t even remember yesterday. As down as I was last night, and as devastated as I was at losing and feeling as though I’d let everyone down, I’m on such a high right now. Sport is funny that way.” Earlier, Williams had survived a scare to see off Pisnik in the third rubber of the tie, and nudge the US in front. Williams struggled early on with the subtle spins of her opponent on the red clay courts here, but it didn’t take long for her to find her game. After losing 10 of the first 11 points of the match, she won 15 of the last 16 in the first set. She continued in the second just as she finished the first and wrapped up a 6-3, 6-1 victory. It brought a successful conclusion to Zina Garrison’s first tie as Fed Cup captain, and she seemed to relish it. Slovenia, meanwhile, can take a lot of positives out of the event after Pisnik and Srebotnik both ran the American team close. For a country of two million people, it was a huge step forward. “It’s going to be a big help for our tennis federation,” said the Slovenian captain, Mima Jausovec. “I think we are going to have more help to build up our programs. We also want other young players to go the same way as these girls did. This match has done so much for sports in Slovenia.” The US will now travel to Austria in July for the quarterfinals. “Being the competitor I am, and the competitors the girls are, we want to go there and win because they beat us last time,” said Garrison. “But, it’s going to be just after Wimbledon, it’s probably going to be on clay, and we will really have to step it up.” She will certainly have plenty of players to choose from with Serena Williams and Lindsay Davenport both possibilities, while Venus confirmed that she will be available. “It was amazing,” said Williams, of the Portoroz experience. “This was my first Fed Cup tie without Serena playing, and I would love to keep playing. I haven’t had as much chance to play Fed Cup as I would have liked, so I definitely want to keep it moving.” No doubt tennis fans in the USA, and to a lesser extent those in Austria, will be feeling the same way. ---- 我想雷蒙一定壓力大 所以他比賽贏後緊抱大威(上篇第三張照片) --

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