Open de Moselle & Bucharest: Saturday’s preview
The Saturday’s schedule of play at the Open de Moselle tennis tournament will feature a total of two semi final matches.
The previous season’s runner up and sixth seeded tennis player, Philipp Kohlschreiber from Germany, will meet the eight seeded, Gilles Simon.
Richard Gasquet will face a qualifier from Germany, Mischa Zverev on the very first occasion.
Gilles enjoys a 3-1 career record versus Philipp, winning earlier this month during the second round of the year’s final major, the United States Open tennis tournament in a five set thriller. Philipp and Zverev have yet to lose a set this week. In fact,
Philipp has not been broken in twenty-seven games, preventing a total of eight break points.
In the first clash on Saturday, Philipp will be making his second career appearance in an ATP World Tour final four of this season, the first since Auckland back during the month of January.
He is attempting to make his way into his fifth career ATP World Tour final and very first since one season ago here when he was knocked out by Gael Monfils in a total of three sets. He has lost five consecutive matches at the hands of French tennis player
since defeating Marc Gicquel in Auckland.
Gilles is making his first final four showdown since Lyon during the month of October back in 2009. He is career 6-2 in ATP World Tour finals and his previous trophy came in Bangkok last year.
In the second semi final match, the 2004 finalist Richard will try to advance into his fourth ATP World Tour final this year and fifteenth of his career. Zverev, on the other hand, who is also hoping to break through to his first ATP World Tour title battle,
is contesting in his third career semi final. Not even a single qualifier has made it into an ATP World Tour final this season. Pablo Andujar, a Spanish qualifier is in the final four in Bucharest on Saturday.
In case of an all countrymen title battle on Sunday, here is a look at the last time it took place. All French final back in February 2010 which featured Julien Benneteau and Michael Llorda, all German final back in 2004, which highlighted Nicolas kiefer
and Tommy Haas and the All French final back in 2004, where Haehnel and Gasquet came face to face for the title victory.
In the doubles matches, the top seeded duo d**k Norman and Wesley Moodie made it into the semi final round of the Open de Moselle tennis tournament with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over the British pair of Ken Skupski and Colin Fleming on Friday in Metz.
Wesley and d**k are through to the semi-finals on the seventh occasion this year. However, they have not advanced into the finals since June back in 2009, when they reached back-to-back final clashes at Hertogenbosch and Roland Garros.
The Belgium- South African team is currently ranked fifth in the world by the Association of Tennis Professionals and is hoping to earn one of five remaining spots in the eight team field at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals after a narrow miss back in
2009.
In other action in Bucharest, the second seeded Spaniards Santiago Ventura and Marcel Granollers got past the fourth seeded David Marrero and Pablo Cuevas in a total of two sets on Friday with a match score of 6-3, 6-2 on Friday.
Santiago and Marcel are pairing up on the very first occasion since capturing the Chennai trophy in the first week of the 2010 year.
They are scheduled to play Lukasz Kubot and Juan Ignacio Chela on Saturday. Juan and Lukasz are making their partnership debut this week.
Tags: