Oct 31, 2025, 04:10 PM ET<\/p>\n
PARIS — Jannik Sinner dismissed Ben Shelton 6-3, 6-3 to reach the Paris Masters semifinals for the first time Friday and move closer to regaining the world No. 1 ranking.<\/p>\n
Sinner’s seventh straight win over the American also extended his indoor winning streak to 24 dating to November 2023.<\/p>\n
If Sinner takes the Paris title, his first Masters trophy of the year, he will return to No. 1 on Monday.<\/p>\n
He next faces defending champion Alexander Zverev, who saved two match points to overcome Daniil Medvedev 2-6, 6-3, 7-6 (5) and end a five-match, two-year losing streak against him.<\/p>\n
No. 3-ranked Zverev and No. 2 Sinner just met in the Vienna final last weekend when Sinner won 7-5 in the third. Their head-to-head is at 4-4.<\/p>\n
Zverev saved both match points against Medvedev on serve at 4-5 in the deciding set. Medvedev, who beat Zverev in the 2020 Paris final, rallied in the tiebreaker to 5-5 but Zverev pulled away again to win after 2\u00bd hours.<\/p>\n
“Daniil is kind of my kryptonite, I don’t like playing him,” Zverev said in his on-court interview. “He’s somebody who has had my number for the last couple of years. I’m very pleased with the win for sure. Against Jannik, we had a fantastic match last Sunday. I’m happy to be on court with him again. Hopefully we share another great match.”<\/p>\n
Felix Auger-Aliassime ended wild-card Valentin Vacherot’s impressive run in Paris by 6-2, 6-2 in their quarterfinal.<\/p>\n
Vacherot had won his previous 10 Masters matches — including his first title in Shanghai this month — but Auger-Aliassime proved too strong for the Monegasque player as he advanced to his fourth Masters semifinal.<\/p>\n
“He is so confident, and you are kind of scared to be honest,” Auger-Aliassime said. “You are not sure if he has got some magic right now that nobody else has. I had to be so focused from the start and this level of intensity … helped ease me into the match.”<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime has reached 10 tour semifinals this season, second only to Carlos Alcaraz, and gone on to win titles in Adelaide, Montpellier and Brussels.<\/p>\n
The Canadian will face Alexander Bublik after the Kazakh ousted sixth-seeded Alex de Minaur 6-7 (5), 6-4, 7-5 without dropping serve.<\/p>\n
Bublik has won 30 of 37 matches since the French Open and four titles, and he’s the first Kazakh to reach a Masters semifinal.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oct 31, 2025, 04:10 PM ET PARIS — Jannik Sinner dismissed Ben Shelton 6-3, 6-3 to reach the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-264500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}