Canadian tennis star F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime advanced to the semifinals of the ATP Finals for the first time in his career with a 6-4, 7-6 (4) win over Germany’s Alexander Zverev on Friday.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old from Montreal improved to 2-1 in round-robin play to finish second in the Bjorn Borg Group and will face world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz of Spain on Saturday in the semifinals of the elite season-ending event.<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime, seeded eighth in Turin, claimed the only break of the match in the final game of the first set.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zverev failed to convert any of his four break-point opportunities and made 18 of his 27 unforced errors in the second set, during which he repeatedly gestured towards his team in apparent frustration.<\/p>\n
In the tiebreaker, he sent an easy return into the net to hand Auger-Aliassime two match points. The Canadian needed only one as Zverev hit a forehand long.<\/p>\n
“It was a great first set. He was getting a few chances but I came up with big serves to save them,” said Auger-Aliassime, who is up three spots to No. 5 in the ATP Live Rankings. “The first set was very solid and the start of the second set was, too. I had a lot of chances.<\/p>\n
“When that happens, you need to focus on the presen,t but you\u2019re aware of missed opportunities, so the match got a little tense from that moment. But I was able to hold serve and in the tie-break, it was tight till the end.”<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime improved to 4-6 against Zverev. He won both meetings this year, including a third-round victory at the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
Zverev, a two-time ATP Finals champion, fell to 1-and-2 and failed to advance out of the group along with American Ben Shelton (0-3).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Defending champion and world No. 2 Jannik Sinner of Italy swept his matches to advance top of the group and will face No. 7 Alex de Minaur of Australia in the other semifinal. Sinner defeated Shelton 6-3, 7-6 (3) in Friday’s other match.<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime is 3-4 against Alcaraz, with the Spanish star winning their last four meetings.<\/p>\n
“This is a high-value tournament for players,” said Auger-Aliassime when asked about facing Alcaraz. “It\u2019s like a grand finale and when you have a look at the list of champions, there have been many No. 1s. You want to be in the final but I\u2019ll have to go through a great player to do that. I will take my chance if I have it.”<\/p>\n
Alcaraz topped the Jimmy Connors group after sweeping his matches and ensuring he will finish the season with the No. 1 ranking on the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime is making his second appearance at the ATP Finals. In 2022, he upset Spanish legend Rafael Nadal, but lost his other two matches and didn’t advance out of his group.<\/p>\n
He appeared to be in tough early in this tournament after a furious late-season charge to qualify for the event. He appeared to injure his leg in a 7-5, 6-1 opening loss to Sinner.<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime rebounded quickly, however, coming back from a set down to beat Shelton 4-6, 7-6 (7), 7-5 and put himself in a position to advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canadian tennis star F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime advanced to the semifinals of the ATP Finals for the first time in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-283715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}