The first-seeded home crowd favorite, Gael Monfils defeated Filip Krajinovic to reach his 4th final at Open Sud de France in Montpellier.
After Monfils remained
the only French player in Montpellier, all of the fans are cheering for him to win the third title. The Frenchman was successful in 2010 and 2014 and reached the final in 2012. However, he did not play the tournament since 2016 when he lost in the first round.
But this year, Monfils decided that he wants to play the
Open Sud de France and it was a great decision. After
victories over Mannarino and
Gombos, he faced
Filip Krajinovic in the semifinal.
World number 9 kept a high level of his first service throughout the match, winning 81% of points after his first service. He improved this statistic by scoring 12 aces. In the first set, Monfils faced 2 breakpoints in the first game but he turned them away. From that moment we did not see any breakpoints in the first set and so it was decided by the tie-break. Gael managed to turn the score when he was already 2-4 down but he got 7-4 victory in the end.
The second set was far more dominant by the Frenchman. Again, he was the first one to face a breakpoint. But he turned it away again and used 2 out of his 3 later to gain a big lead. Monfils won the second set 6-2 to book his spot in the final. There, he will be facing the winner of the match between
David Goffin and Vasek Pospisil.
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