Defending champion, Alexander Zverev became the third youngster to reach the Citi Open semi-finals after a three set win over Kei Nishikori as the Washington rain causes WTA chaos.
The top seeded German beat Kei Nishikori 3-6 6-1 6-4 to reach the last four in Washington for the second successive year. As a result he is the third semi-finalist at this year’s tournament to be aged at 21 years old or younger joining Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alex De Minaur. The Grrek youngster, Tsitsipas reached the semi-finals by demolishing David Goffin in straight sets while De Minaur benefited off an Andy Murray withdrawal.
However the young generation doesn’t stop there as 20 year old Russian, Andrey Rublev can complete the clean sweep of Next Gen stars with a victory over Denis Kudla today. Should Rublev win his quarter-final, it would be the first time since Buenos Aires 1995 that all four semi-finalists will be 21 or under at an ATP event. It is quite a feat given the dominance of some of the older players such as Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in recent times.
The winner of the last ATP quarter-final will play Alex De Minaur in the semi-finals in the evening, while the day session semi-final sees Alexander Zverev take on Stefanos Tsitsipas in an exciting match on paper.
Washington Rain Causes WTA Chaos.
The WTA event though is in chaos as rain halted progress of many of the women playing at the Citi Open. The state of play sees Andrea Petkovic into the semi-finals after her epic three set win over Belinda Bencic and will play the winner of Svetlana Kuznetsova’s match with Yulia Putintseva. The Russian currently leads 6-2 2-2 with the match set to re-start at 12:00 local time.
The other two quarter-finals have yet to be completed as well with 7th seed Donna Vekic currently leading Magda Linette 3-0 in the first set while Allie Kiick’s match with Saisai Zheng is yet to start. The three remaining quarter-finals as well as the semi-finals have to be completed on Saturday.
Not only has the Washington rain affected their own tournament but it has also impacted the Montreal qualifying event with five players, who are in Washington, set to begin their Montreal qualifying campaigns today. The following players will have to make a choice between Washington and Montreal qualifying:
- Donna Vekic
- Magda Linette
- Yulia Putintseva
- Ysaline Bonaventure (Washington Doubles)
- Saisai Zheng
Those players’ matches are set for 16:00 local time in Montreal as some of them will have to miss out on the chance of qualifying for one of the biggest tournaments on the WTA calendar.
