Top seed Alexander Bublik eased past Slovak Alex Molcan 6-3, 6-2, in his 400th tour-level match, to reach the Kitzb\u00fchel semi-finals for a fifth time this season and set up a rematch with fourth seed Tomas Martin Etcheverry. The Kazakh, the defending champion, is bidding to become the first title-holder to reach the semi-finals here since Robin Haase in 2013, and a 27th career semi-final overall.<\/p>\n
Etcheverry booked his own spot by beating Peruvian fifth seed Ignacio Buse 6-2, 7-5, moving into his third semi-final of the season after Buenos Aires and a title run in Rio de Janeiro, and looking to add a clay semi-final to a season that has already delivered his maiden ATP Tour title.<\/p>\n
Buse, who had been chasing a first Peruvian semi-final appearance at this event in the Open Era, fell just short.<\/p>\n
In the bottom half, German Yannick Hanfmann became the oldest semi-finalist in Kitzb\u00fchel\u2019s Open Era history, beating Argentine Sebastian Baez 6-3, 6-1 at 34 years and eight months to surpass the previous record held by Paolo Lorenzi. It is Hanfmann\u2019s 11th career ATP Tour semi-final and fourth at this event, where he will face Frenchman Quentin Halys for a place in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
Halys reached his first semi-final of the season by beating sixth seed Mariano Navone 7-5, 6-3, a result that also handed him his first win over an Argentine opponent on tour after six straight losses in the match-up, having already knocked out second seed Valentin Vacherot earlier in the week. Baez, who was chasing an 18th career semi-final, fell to Hanfmann for a second time at this venue after also losing to the German here last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top seed Alexander Bublik eased past Slovak Alex Molcan 6-3, 6-2, in his 400th tour-level match, to reach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-821924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821924","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=821924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}