Czechia are through to the semi-finals of the Billie Jean King Cup Finals after beating Great Britain 2-0 in Shenzhen on Tuesday. The first of the week's Billie Jean King Cup results went the way almost everyone expected. How Czechia got there did not. Sonay Kartal, in her first match for six months, took Marie Bouzková to a minute short of three hours and saved three match points before losing, and Linda Nosková finished the tie with an ace.

The Billie Jean King Cup, formerly the Fed Cup, is the women's team competition between nations. At the Finals each tie is best of three rubbers, two singles and then a doubles only if the singles are split. Czechia never needed theirs. Karolína Muchová and Kateřina Siniaková had been named to play Jodie Burrage and Harriet Dart, and neither Czech played.

Bouzková outlasted Kartal

Kartal had not played since Indian Wells in March, where a back injury ended her tournament and turned out to be a stress fracture that cost her the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. She started as if she had never been away. She led 2-0 and was 40-0 up in the third game, but could not make it 3-0, and Bouzková, preferred to Muchová for the opening singles, recovered to take the first-set tie-break 7-2.

Kartal broke in Bouzková's first service game of the second set and held on to force a decider. In the third she broke again for 2-1, then lost four games in a row as Bouzková moved to 5-2. Kartal saved three match points on her own serve and broke Bouzková when she served for the match, but Bouzková broke back in the tenth game, her fourth break of the match, and took her fourth match point to win 7-6 (2), 4-6, 6-4.

Kartal said afterwards that she had her chances and could not have given more, and that producing that level in her first match back gave her confidence for the rest of the Asian swing.

Bouzková told Czech Television it was a hugely valuable win in a match that was tense from start to finish, and praised the team's energy and her captain, Barbora Strýcová, on the bench.

Highlights via the LTA's official channel

Nosková closed it with an ace

That left Katie Boulter needing to beat the Wimbledon champion to keep Britain in the tie. Nosková, who beat Muchová in the all-Czech final at the All England Club in July, took the first four games and the opening set with a double break.

Boulter pushed her much harder in the second set and forced a tie-break, but Nosková's serve kept bailing her out. She won 36 of her 46 first-serve points and hit 15 aces to Boulter's four. The last came on her first match point and sealed a 6-2, 7-6 (3) win in an hour and 41 minutes.

Who Czechia play next

Czechia, 11-time champions if the titles won as Czechoslovakia are counted, play the winner of Wednesday's quarter-final between Kazakhstan, who are without Elena Rybakina, and Spain on Friday at 11:00 CEST, 10:00 in the UK. It is their first semi-final since 2023. They last won the title in 2018, when Siniaková and Strýcová, now the captain, were in the side that beat the United States in the final.

Great Britain's captain, Anne Keothavong, called the Czechs the strongest team in Shenzhen.

I'd be surprised if they don't go on to win this competition.

Anne Keothavong, after Tuesday's defeat

Britain, who have never won the title, had been chasing a fourth semi-final in five years. They go back into the Qualifiers in 2027.