WINSTON-SALEM (North Carolina): France’s Gael Monfils won an error-filled match over Spaniard Fernando Verdasco 6-7 (8-10), 6-4, 6-4 on Thursday to reach the semi-finals of the Winston-Salem Open.
The 15th seeded Monfils will on Friday face off for a place in the final when he takes on Ukrainian tenth seed Alexandr Dolgopolov, who beat Lu Yen-hsun of Taiwan 7-6 (7-2), 6-3.
“It’s always good to be in the semis after two big wins,” said Monfils.
Austrian Jurgen Melzer came through three rain interruptions to take out Russian Dmitry Tursunov 6-4, 6-3. He will play sixth seed Sam Querrey, a winner over Ricardas Berankis 6-3, 6-4.
Querrey repeated his winning scenario over the Lithuanian after dominating him for the Los Angeles title in July, 2012. The Califonian winner fired ten aces and broke four times.
Berankis entered the match without having lost serve all week, but dropped to 1-7 in quarter-finals over his career with the loss in 69 minutes.
Monfils and seventh seeded Verdasco seemed to play their third match as if neither wanted to win in the closing stages.
The Frenchman, who is back this week after an ankle injury which forced him to miss the two Masters 1000 events this month, could not take advantage of many of the mistakes by Verdasco, whose unforced error count totalled well over 60 in the over two hour contest.
He hadn’t played since reaching the Umag claycourt final in July. — AFP
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