Last Saturday Stefanos Tsitsipas made his second consecutive Open 13 Provence championship game, beating Alexander Bublik 7-5, 6-3 in Marseille.
The second seed lost only one point in service in the second set (20/21) to complete its seventh consecutive victory in the ATP 250 event. Tsitsipas won 14 consecutive sets in Marseille, recovering from a first-round defeat against L ‘. eventual quarterfinal finalist Nicolas Mahut in 2018.
Tsitsipas first asked to win back-to-back titles in an ATP Tour event. The 21-year-old beat Mikhail Kukushkin to lift his second tour-level trophy in this tournament last year.
Tsitsipas will face Rotterdam runner-up Felix Auger-Aliassime or two-time champion Gilles Simon for the title. Defending champion Nitto ATP Finals has a three ATP Head2Head match win against Auger-Aliassime and has yet to meet Simon.
“It keeps getting better and better,” said Tsitsipas. “I really appreciate all the love I get here and tomorrow is an exciting day. I have to prepare, be ready and I can’t wait to show an even better Stefanos tomorrow. “
Tsitsipas took a decisive first step at 3-2, confidently hitting his right as Bublik started to ignite the same wing badly. Despite dropping for the first time this week at 5-4, the reigning champion took the field and continued to attack Bublik’s forehand to get the first set with a second serve break.
After getting his third direct love service, Tsitsipas increased his lead in the opening stages of the second set with another service outage. The world number 6 returned with precision and found the target with shots to pass for a 3-1 advantage. Tsitsipas continued to serve confidently and forced Bublik to make a volleyball error on the backhand at his fourth meeting point to move to 7-2 in Marseille.
“I tried to stay in the game as much as possible and to play each point individually. I know it can be quite unexpected, “said Tsitsipas.” You don’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what to expect from today’s opponent … I am really happy with myself that I found a balance and I was not panicked when things got tight. This is a great attitude that I have put in place. “
Bublik aimed to reach his third ATP Tour final. The Kazakh defeated two semi-players – Benoit Paire and Denis Shapovalov – in three-set games en route to the semifinals.