The Estoril Open’s top two seeds had little difficulty advancing to the quarterfinals of the ATP 250 tournament in Portugal on Thursday. Russia’s Andrey Rublev and Italy’s Luciano Darderi gave up a combined total of just three games between them.
Top-seeded Rublev dispatched Kazakhstan’s Timofey Skatov with a commanding 6-1, 6-1 victory in just 59 minutes. Rublev was sharp on his first serve, winning 17 of 23 first-serve points — a 74 percent clip — and broke his opponent’s serve six times throughout the match.
Darderi was even more overpowering, blanking Spain’s Pedro Martinez 6-0, 6-1. The second seed never faced a single break point during the match and converted 17 of 19 second-serve points.
The day’s biggest surprise came when France’s Luca Van Assche ousted eighth-seeded Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain, 6-3, 4-6, 6-2, in a contest that stretched past the two-hour mark. Portugal’s Jaime Faria, who had already knocked out the No. 6 seed in the opening round, kept his run going with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Peru’s Gonzalo Bueno to reach the quarterfinals.
At the Generali Open in Kitzbuhel, Austria, defending champion and top seed Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan punched his ticket to the semifinals with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Slovakia’s Alex Molcan.
Molcan managed to break Bublik’s serve four times, but Bublik answered by breaking back seven times. A rough fourth game in the second set — during which Bublik committed five double faults — allowed Molcan to level the set at 2-2. Bublik, who finished with 13 aces, then reeled off four straight games to close out the match. He will next face fourth-seeded Tomas Martin Etcheverry of Argentina, who defeated Peru’s Ignacio Buse 6-2, 7-5.
On the other side of the Generali Open draw, France’s Quentin Halys defeated Argentina’s Mariano Navone 7-5, 6-3, while Germany’s Yannick Hanfmann beat Argentina’s Sebastian Baez 6-3, 6-1. Hanfmann and Halys will square off in the remaining semifinal matchup.
