ITALY were crowned Davis Cup champions for a third successive year with victory over Spain on Sunday night.

The two teams reached the final despite the absence of respective star players Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz in Bologna last week.

Matteo Berrettini and Flavio Cobolli were the stars for the Italians without the absent Sinner, both winning their singles matches to earn an unassailable 2-0 lead over Spain in the final on Sunday.

It’s a fourth Davis Cup title for Italy, and a third in a row. The last nation to win three straight titles was the United States, which won five on the bounce from 1968-72.

The second-ranked Sinner, who led Italy to men’s tennis’s biggest team trophy the past two years, opted out of playing this week, preferring to prepare for next season instead. No 8-ranked Lorenzo Musetti wasn’t playing, either.

Italy didn’t need them, winning all three of its matches 2-0 this week after eliminating Austria in the quarter-finals and Belgium in the semi-finals.

In Sunday’s final, Berrettini beat Pablo Carreno Busta 6-3, 6-4 before Cobolli fought back to beat Jaume Munar 1-6, 7-6 (5), 7-5 and clinch the winning point — as he did all three times in the past week. Cobolli dropped his racket to the ground and was lifted in the air by his Italy teammates.

Italy first won the Davis Cup in 1976, before wins in Malaga in 2023 and 2024. This is the first time they have won on home soil.

Six-time champion Spain were playing in the title match for the first time since 2019.