Aslan Karatsev plays perfect match to advance to Madrid semi-finals

Aslan Karatsev is playing some amazing tennis in Madrid and he'll contest the Madrid Open semi-final after taking down Zhizhen Zhang 7-6(3) 6-4.

It was an interesting match between two players that had deep runs in Madrid even though neither expected it. Much like Zhang, Karatsev has been playing some amazing tennis and he was far better today. The Chinese player didn't play his best match admittedly but Karatsev made it really hard for him generally.

He imposed himself as the more aggressive player going for winners in most rallies. It worked out well for him because he had far more than Zhang, almost three times as much and it proved crucial in the tiebreak. Both held their serve with minor issues and we ended up in the tiebreak. Zhang went up 3-1 but the Karatsev started bombarding and turned it around to win it 7-3.

He continued to do that in the second set taking an early break and from there it was just a matter of keeping his serve. He was able to do that rather comfortably not allowing a single break point to finish off the match 6-4. A total of 29 winners for the Russian to only 11 by Zhang. The crucial part is that he didn't blast many errors as he only had 8 which is one more than Zhang.