Borna Coric has moved into his first ATP semi-final of the 2017 season. The young Croatian edged second seed Albert Ramos-Vinolas in 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in Morocco to set up a meeting with Jiri Vesely, who took down fifth seed Paolo Lorenzi 5-6, 6-3, 7-6.
Coric’s first semi-final of the season comes after a poor start to the season. The teenager had failed to register back-to-back wins at tournament in his first seven attempts, winning just two matches by late February, and has seen his ranking drop by twenty places this week to N0.79. He has a career-high ranking of No.33. He broke his duck in Miami by winning two rounds, and has also won twice this week by defeating seventh seed Diego Schwartzmann and Reda El Amrani.
Coric was the runner-up at this event twelve months ago, losing to Federico Delbonis. Delbonis was a first-round casualty this year, forced to retire against local wildcard El Amrani to prevent a rematch of last year’s final in the second round.
Vesely followed Coric in producing a comeback win over Paolo Lorenzi, edging the veteran Italian in a close deciding set tiebreak. The Czech has a good record in Marrakech, having reached the semi-finals for the third consecutive time with the win over Lorenzi. Intriguingly, the player who stopped Vesely in this tournament last year was none other than Coric, the Croatian edging two tiebreaks. Coric leads the head-to-head 2-0.
Philipp Kohlschreiber was another winner in the quarter-finals as the veteran German edged countryman Jan-Lennard Struff 3-6, 7-5, 6-3. Kohlschreiber takes the lead in the head-to-head with his fellow German 3-2.
Kohlschreiber awaits the winner of the match between the evergreen Tommy Robredo and sixth seed Benoit Paire. Robredo had accounted for top seed Grigor Dimitrov in the second round.
