DAVIS CUP 2025 PREVIEW: CHINESE TAIPEI vs USA

Chinese Taipei welcome the United States of America to the Taipei Tennis Center on Friday and the home team goes into the Davis Cup tie as longshots to overcome a new look, but formidable Team USA, who are seeking to Make Davis Cup Great Again for the first time since Andy Roddick, James Blake and the Bryans took home the Trophy in 2007.

Alex Michelsen heads up the Americans. One of the most exciting young players in the top 100, he enters fresh off reaching the fourth round of the Australian Open where he ultimately went down to Alex de Minaur.

Marcos Giron is more of a late developer and makes his Davis Cup debut at the age of thirty-one. He too had a positive Australian Open accounting for Yannick Hanfmann and Tomas Martin Etcheverry before getting Jannik Sinner'd in the third round.

Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek won the Olympic Silver medal in Paris last year so offer a formidable Doubles Challenge, while Mackenzie McDonald offers a capable back-up should one be required.

While they are overmatched in terms of rankings, Chinese Taipei are the home team and a competitive set of players will turn out. Wu Tung-lin, known on tour as Tony Wu, is an eight-time winner in Davis Cup, most recently winning both his singles matches against Damir Dzhumhur and Mirza Basic, anchoring his team to a 3-2 victory over Bosnia & Herzegovina last September.

Yet to make the main draw of a Slam, Wu remarkably does have a win to his name at Masters 1000 level, having defeated Alexander Bublik at Indian Wells in 2023. Having reached a career high of 158 around that time, his ranking has slipped into the 300s, so he didn’t make Australian Open qualifying. Instead, Wu began 2025 by playing two Challengers in Bangkok, progressing to the second round in one of them. A strong returner, he can prove a difficult opponent.

Tseng Chun-hsin, more commonly known as Jason Tseng, is a Mouratoglou Academy graduate who made it into the Next Gen finals in 2022. Most recently he lost out in the second round of qualifying for the Australian Open to Hady Habib, who of course went on to qualify and then beat Bu Yunchaokete in Round 1 to make history for his nation. Tseng has played in the main draw of all the Slams at least once although is yet to pick up a win.

Tseng has won seven Davis Cup rubbers. Last year, Tseng had a positive summer clay-court Challenger season in Europe, reaching four finals and winning twice, in Hungary and Italy and along the way picked up a win over Fabio Fognini on the main tour in Croatia. However, his hard-court Challenger form at the tail end of 2024 was patchy with first-round defeats to Li Tu in Seoul and Coleman Wong in Matsuyama rounding out his season.

In Doubles, the home team will be represented by Ray Ho and Yu Hsu-hsiou. The pair dispatched Mirza Basic and Nerman Fatic to nudge Chinese Taipei in front of Bosnia & Herzegovina before Tony Wu completed the job last September.

Hsu has shown flashes in Singles and famously defeated Thanasi Kokkinakis in the first round of the US Open in 2023, having come through Qualifying. The same year, he reached the third round of the Shanghai Masters and peaked at 158 in the rankings.

Ray Ho is a Doubles specialist. He won the Busan 125 Challenger with Nam Ji-sung in 2024 (with Hsu on the losing side with Chung Yun-seong) and has started off 2025 in a hurry, winning two Challengers in Bangkok (Nonthaburi 2 and Nonthaburi 3) with Neil Oberleitner.

Rounding out the squad is Huang Tsung-hao, currently ranked in the mid-300s.

Team USA will be hot favourites to complete a clean sweep.