BENGALURU: Things did not go according to plan for the second seed Lorenzo Musetti and defending champion Jiri Vesely in the ongoing Tata Open Maharashtra in Pune on Friday. If the unseeded man from Poland, Kamil Majchrzak, came up with an impressive performance to edge past Italy’s Musetti 6-2, 6-7(7-5), 6-4 in a close quarter final encounter, Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland secured a straight-sets 6-3, 6-4 victory over Vesely. Both the winners will meet one another in the semifinals on Saturday.
Majchrzak was off the blocks quickly, easing past his opponent in the first set, but Musetti sprung back in the second with a better display to force a decider. Eventually, world No. 95 Majchrzak managed to put on a good show to clinch the contest. One needs to give credit the way the Polish player delivered despite the Italian testing him in the last two sets.
“It was very difficult because after the first set Lorenzo changed his tactics. He made me play longer rallies and he actually found his rhythm so it was difficult from almost the beginning of the second set. Maybe, I was not returning good enough to put pressure on his service games,” Majchrzak said after the match.
In the other clash, the 22-year-old Ruusuvuori took just 77 minutes to ease past Vesely in straight sets. In fact, the Finnish has been in an impressive run this edition as he had started the campaign with a victory over last edition’s runner-up Egor Gerasimov. Meanwhile, N Sriram Balaji and Vishnu Vardhan suffered a defeat against the duo of Luke Saville and John-Patrick Smith in the doubles semi-finals encounter.