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Fed Cup heroes
Steven LynchNovember 3, 2014
With the Fed Cup final fast approaching, who has won it most often? asked Clare Cunningham
The Fed Cup - the national team competition in women's tennis, which started life as the Federation Cup in 1963 - has been won most often by the USA, on no fewer than 17 occasions (the last in 2000). Australia have won it seven times, as have the Czech Republic if you include their first five wins, as Czechoslovakia. Spain have won it five times, and Italy and Russia four.
Chris Evert-Lloyd was on the winning side on a record eight occasions between 1977 and 1989, including six in a row from '77. She won her first 29 singles matches in the Fed Cup, and finished with a 40-2 record. Billie-Jean King played on the winning side seven times between the inaugural event in 1963 (when she was plain Miss Moffitt) and 1979.
Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Conchita Martinez featured in all five of Spain's wins, between 1991 and 1998.
Martina Navratilova won the cup four times - with Czechoslovakia in 1975, and USA in 1982, 1986 and 1989. She won the first 40 Fed Cup matches she played - 20 singles and 20 doubles - before losing her perfect record in her last match, a doubles in 2004, when she was 47.
This year's Fed Cup final, between the Czech Republic and Germany, will be held in the O2 Arena in Prague on November 8-9.
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