LONDON \u2014 Francisco Cerundolo booked his place in the final at Queen\u2019s Club with a hard-fought 6-7 (5\/7), 6-3, 6-4 win over the American Brandon Nakashima on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Cerundolo will face American eighth seed Tommy Paul in Sunday\u2019s decider after he beat Frenchman Ugo Humbert 6-3, 6-3.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super happy because it\u2019s my first final in an ATP 500,\u201d Cerundolo said on court at the end of the match.<\/p>\n
The pair went toe-to-toe on the grass at the Wimbledon warm-up event in the first set before the 24-year-old Nakashima got the edge in the tiebreak, taking it 7\/5.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Argentinian hit back in the second, breaking to go up 4-3 and picking up the next two games to square the match.<\/p>\n
The decider went on serve initially until Cerundolo produced a perfect cross-court forehand that left Nakashima swishing at air.<\/p>\n
The break put him 3-2 up but he couldn\u2019t retain the advantage with the American, now coached by former world no.6 Wayne Ferreira who won at Queen\u2019s in 1992, breaking straight back.<\/p>\n
Cerundolo, who won a grass title at Eastbourne in 2023, broke again to go 5-4 up and duly served out for the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a really challenging match, really tough,\u201d said Cerundolo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Brandon is playing incredible too. He was playing amazing during the whole weekend today also,\u201d he added according to AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super happy because I just stayed there competing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul, a Queen\u2019s champion in 2024, continued his impressive form this week against Humbert, having not dropped a set in west London.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old will seek to claim his second trophy of the season, after lifting the clay-court title in Houston, when he meets Cerundolo in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
Cerundolo boasts a 5-2 lead over Paul in their previous career meetings, including a three-sets victory over the American in the round of 32 at Queen\u2019s three years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 Francisco Cerundolo booked his place in the final at Queen\u2019s Club with a hard-fought 6-7 (5\/7),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-272761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}