Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo continued their outstanding start to the grass-court season on Friday at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle, coming out on top in a marathon 6-7(2), 7-6(6), 10-3 semi-final match over Fabrice Martin and Albert Ramos-Vinolas.
Kubot/Melo missed two set points at 6-5 in the opening set, then twice served to stay in the match at 4-5 and 5-6 in the second set. But after prevailing in a tight tie-break, they stormed through the Match Tie-break to advance in one hour and 45 minutes.
The Polish-Brazilian duo have won three ATP World Tour titles this year. They’ve prevailed at ATP World Tour Masters 1000 events in Miami (d. Monroe/Sock) and Madrid (d. Mahut/Vasselin), and last week’s grass-court event in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (d. Klaasen/Ram).
Awaiting them in Sunday’s final are second seeds Raven Klaasen and Rajeev Ram or brothers Alexander Zverev and Mischa Zverev.
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Over at the Aegon Championships in London, the French duo of Julien Benneteau and Edouard Roger-Vasselin reached the final by defeating Rohan Bopanna and Ivan Dodig 6-4, 7-5. Next up for them are third seeds Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares or Marin Cilic and Marcin Matkowski.