Defending champion Tomas Berdych stayed undefeated at the Shenzhen Open on Thursday. The top-seeded Czech delivered 16 aces and withstood a tight contest from Kazakhstan's Mikhail Kukushkin to move into the quarter-finals 7-6(7), 7-6(4) in about two hours.
Berdych and Kukushkin both won exactly 84 points during their second-round match but the Czech was more clutch when the match was on the line. Serving at 5/4 in the second-set tie-break, Berdych delivered his 16th ace. Kukushkin netted a backhand on match point to give Berdych his fifth consecutive win in Shenzhen.
“It wasn't easy at all,” said Berdych.
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The 31-year-old right-hander is trying to reach his first final of the season. The nine-month drought is the longest Berdych has gone without a final to start a season since 2011, when he won Beijing on 9 Oct. (d. Cilic). The 6'5” right-hander is also attempting to qualify for the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals for the seventh consecutive season.
Berdych is currently No. 9 in the Emirates ATP Race To London, 580 points behind eighth-placed Rafael Nadal. The top eight qualify. But Berdych could cut the Spaniard's lead to 330 points if he repeats in Shenzhen and claims the 250 Emirates ATP Rankings points up for grabs this week.
Berdych will next face countryman Jiri Vesely, who beat Spaniard Inigo Cervantes 7-6(2), 6-3 during Thursday's final match on Centre Court. Berdych leads their FedEx ATP Head2Head series 2-0, including a 6-3, 6-2 victory in the Shenzhen quarter-finals last year.
Who's Ahead Of Berdych? View The Emirates ATP Race To London Standings
QUARTER-FINAL PREVIEW: No. 1 seed Tomas Berdych, No. 3 seed Richard Gasquet and No. 4 seed Bernard Tomic are among the stars in quarter-final action at the Shenzhen Open on Friday. The defending champion Berdych will face 23-year-old countryman Jiri Vesely in a rematch of the 2015 quarter-finals. Berdych won 6-3, 6-2 and has never lost a set in Shenzhen. However, his last meeting with Vesely was anything but routine. In a fourth-round match that spanned two days at Wimbledon, Berdych needed five sets, eight match points and three hours, 55 minutes to defeat his fellow Czech. With a win Friday, Berdych would close the gap between him and Rafael Nadal to 490 points in the Emirates ATP Race to London. Berdych and Nadal are playing next week at ATP World Tour 500 events in Tokyo and Beijing respectively.
Qualifier Mischa Zverev, who has not dropped a set in four matches this week, opens play against Gasquet. Zverev’s last semi-final came more than six years ago at Metz, where he advanced to the final as a qualifier. Gasquet reached his only semi-final of 2016 en route to the Montpellier title in his season debut. The Shenzhen Open is Gasquet’s 13th tournament appearance since then. Unseeded players Janko Tipsarevic and Malek Jaziri meet in the second quarter-final. Tipsarevic is seeking his first semi-final since winning the 2013 Chennai title. Jaziri, who earned the biggest win of his career on Wednesday over 14th-ranked David Goffin, played in his only two semi-finals at 2012 Moscow and 2015 Winston-Salem.
Tomic and his quarter-final opponent Thomaz Bellucci have also struggled to reach semi-finals, albeit for different reasons. None of Bellucci’s 15 ATP World Tour semi-final appearances have come on outdoor hard courts. The Brazilian is 0-5 in quarter-finals on outdoor hard courts, including a three-set loss to Nadal at the Rio Olympics. Tomic is a Top 4 seed with a first-round bye for the ninth time in the last 12 months at the ATP World Tour 250 level. He did not reach the semi-finals, or win back-to-back matches, in any of his eight previous attempts. The 23-year-old Aussie did, however, advance to the semi-finals at the season-opening ATP World Tour 250 event in Brisbane, where he was not awarded a bye as the No. 7 seed.
The doubles semi-finals are also on Friday’s schedule, featuring No. 2 seeds Oliver Marach and Fabrice Martin, as well as No. 3 seeds Mate Pavic and Michael Venus. Both teams are battling in the Emirates ATP Doubles Race To London -- Marach and Martin are up to 13th in the race, while Pavic and Venus are 16th. As in singles, only the Top 8 doubles teams will qualify for the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals.