Denmark’s Holger Rune, the 2022 Paris Masters champion, advanced to the event’s semifinals with a 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory over ninth-seeded Alex de Minaur of Australia on Friday.
Rune, the 13th seed, will square off on Saturday against third-seeded German Alexander Zverev, who downed 10th-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece 7-5, 6-4.
Russia’s Karen Khachanov upset eighth-seeded Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria 6-2, 6-3, setting up a semifinal against 15th-seeded Ugo Humbert of France. Humbert eliminated Australia’s Jordan Thompson 6-2, 7-6 (4).
Rune sits 13th in the chase for eight spots at the ATP Finals, which run Nov. 10-17 in Turin, Italy. de Minaur is in eighth place as he tries to retain his position.
Rune took advantage of a rough serving performance from de Minaur, who put just 47 percent of his first serves in play.
Still, Rune said of his opponent, “He was (hitting) every ball with quality, deep in the court and the court is quite fast here. I had to adjust my game a little bit, and it was a constant battle, but how I treated the last couple of games was very good. I went for it, I got it and I am very happy.”
Now Rune will oppose Zverev for the third time this year. The German beat the Dane in a five-set match at the French Open, and then Zverev won again in straight sets at Montreal.
“Sascha and I had a great match in Paris, where he took it in five,” Rune said. “I beat him one time (in 2022), he took me last time. He is one of the best players this year, so I will have to be very well prepared and physically recover and build on the level from this match.”
Zverev is headed to his 20th career ATP Masters 1000 semifinal. The only other active players with more success in the tour’s top events aside from the majors are Novak Djokovic (78 semifinals) and Rafael Nadal (76).
Zverev finished with more winners than Tsitsipas (21-18), and Tsitsipas committed more unforced errors (28-21).
“I felt like I could hit it quite hard today and against him, if you are just pushing it back, he is going to make you pay,” Zverev said. “He is someone on the forehand side who can be so aggressive and he can move forward. So I was happy to take that away.”
–Field Level Media
