TENNIS Portugal Open – The tournament in Portugal is entering its final stages and some mild shocks have already taken place. In the women’s tournament the draw for the semi-finals is already set: Kuznetsova will play Vesnina while Begu will face Suarez Navarro. In the men’s tournament Montanes saw his hopes of becoming the first player to win this tournament three times shattered by Granollers. Joshua Bosco
The tournament in Portugal is entering its final stages and some mild shocks have already taken place.
In the women’s tournament the draw for the semi-finals is already set: No.7 seed Svetlana Kuznetsova will play World No.33 Elena Vesnina while Romanian Irina-Camelia Begu will face top seed Carla Suarez Navarro.
Suarez Navarro reached the last four sweeping past Polona Hercog 6-1 6-3 in just 1h11m: so far she has lost just seven games in three matches and recorded a 6-0 6-0 win over Zahlavova Strycova in the second round.
Her semi-final opponent, World No.117 Begu, reached the penultimate round battling past Swiss player Timea Bacsinszky 6-3 7-6(6) in a match that featured 8 breaks. The Romanian had beaten No.5 seed Kaia Kanepi to reach the quarterfinals.
In the bottom half of the draw, Kuznetsova defeated World No.18 Eugenie Bouchard 6-4 6-1 with a great display of tennis: she was trailing 4-1 in the first set before winning 11 of the next 12 games to book a spot in the semi-finals in just over 1 hour and fifteen minutes.
In the only three-set match of the day, Elena Vesnina came back from 5-2 down in the third to beat Roberta Vinci 7-6(5) 4-6 7-5 in a thrilling match. After losing the first set in a tiebreak where 9 points out of twelve were won against serve, Vinci got the only break of the second set to take the match to a decider. The Italian seemed to have the match won when she was serving on 5-2 but Vesnina took the next 5 games to win the match and reach the semi-finals.
In the men’s tournament there were a couple of upsets in the earlier rounds: Rui Machado, spurred on by his home crowd, serve a double bagel to No.5 seed Dmitry Tursunov in the first round, while Albert Montanes saw his hopes of becoming the first player to win this tournament three times shattered by Marcel Granollers in the second round.
Tomorrow’s quarterfinals will see top seed Tomas Berdych, who beat Devvarman in straight sets, face qualifier Leonardo Mayer and Victor Hanescu take on Portuguese wildcard Gastao Elias, who beat Garcia Lopez in three sets.
In the bottom half, a Spanish derby will see Marcel Granollers play Daniel Gimeno-Traver while 2nd seed Milos Raonic will meet Argentine Carlos Berlocq.
