2025 Billie Jean King Cup Qualifiers Draw Set: USA, Canada, Great Britain To Play
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Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek could be among the players who compete in the Billie Jean King Cup qualifiers. The six groups for that stage have been announced.
This year's Billie Jean King Cup qualifiers has a different format to 2024, which used home and away ties. The 2025 iteration contains six groups of three teams, with one of the teams in each group being the host nation.
Team Italy is the defending Billie Jean King Cup champion after defeating Slovakia in the final. Jasmine Paolini capped off her outstanding 2024 season by playing the starring role in her country's triumph.
That success means Team Italy received a bye as the defending champions. China, which will host the end-of-season finals for the next three years, also received a bye into that stage of the event.
Those byes mean six places are up for grabs. Four fewer teams will qualify for the Finals in Shenzhen, China, than in 2024. There was a first round at last year's Finals, but the 2025 iteration will only consist of a quarterfinal, semifinal, and final.
If all its players make themselves available, Team USA will probably have the strongest team in the event. Their options include world No. 1 Coco Gauff, the recent Australian Open winner Madison Keys, Jessica Pegula, and Emma Navarro.
All four of those players will be inside the WTA's Top 10 when the new rankings are released on Monday. No other country can call upon such strength in depth, but only if all those women are available to play.
Team USA is in a group with last year's runner-up, Slovakia, the group's hosts, and Denmark. The Slovakians' run to the 2024 final was among the most unexpected in the tournament's history.
While Team USA will probably still be favorites on paper, they must be wary of Rebecca Sramkova becoming inspired again after her excellent results at last year's tournament and in the final months of 2024.
Gauff did not represent Team USA at any stage of the 2024 Billie Jean King Cup. By contrast, Iga Swiatek, who had a match point in the Australian Open semifinal before losing, represented her country in all stages of Team Poland's impressive run to the semifinal last year.
Swiatek's involvement in the 2025 qualifiers might be improved by Poland being the host in its group with Ukraine and Slovakia. The tie with Ukraine might feature a fascinating matchup between Swiatek and Elina Svitolina.
It is challenging to know where Elena Rybakina will be by the week of April 7th to 13th, when the qualifiers are held. She split with coach Goran Ivanisevic after just a few months together. That was likely due to the 25-year-old's controversial attempt to reinstate Stefano Vukov to her team.
Rybakna's Team Kazakhstan is in Group D with the hosts Australia and Colombia. Returning to Australia and adjusting to the timezone for a second time this season might be challenging for Kazakh and Colombian players.
Emma Raducanu's Team Great Britain, which reached the semifinals last year, is in the same group as Germany and the host nation, the Netherlands. The Brits defeated Germany in the first round of the 2024 Finals in Malaga.
Canada, Romania, and Japan are in Group A and Czech Republic, Spain, and Brazil are in Group B.
