Grand Prix Hassan II: Yuki-Olivetti into semis with a three-setter win

Yuki Bhambri and Albano Olivetti progressed to the semifinal of Grand Prix Hassan II after upsetting the third-seeded pairing of Rafael Matos and Nicolas Barrientos at this ATP 250 event in Marrakech, Morocco on Thursday.

The Indo-french pair clinched a hard-fought three-set (7-6(5), 6-7(1), 10-7) victory against the higher-ranked Brazilian-Colombian pair in the quarterfinals.

The match started with top-class serving games as the first set went into the tie-breaker after a perfect serving set. The tie-breaker was also very closely poised at 4-4 but then Yuki-Olivetti won two mini-breaks to clinch the set.

The first break of the match came out in the seventh game of the second set when Matos-Nioclas went down, 15-40. The Indo-French pair gained a big advantage of 5-3 and had four match points in the ninth game. But, they missed this opportunity and dropped the game and later the set on the tiebreaker, 1-7.

The match went into a super tie-breaker, which was going very smoothly but then one mistake from the third-seeded pair, they gave a mini break at 4-6, which cost them the super tie-breaker and the match, 7-10.

In the semis, Yuki and Albano will be up against the second-seeded Austrian pair of Alexander Erler and Lucas Miedler, who had a comfortable 7-6(4), 6-4 win in the quarterfinal.