Hubert Hurkacz has continued his sizzling late-season type by defeating Ugo Humbert 6-4, 3-6, 7-6(5) Saturday to advance to the Swiss Indoors Basel ultimate.
The win lifted the World No. 11 Pole forward of Taylor Fritz into ninth place within the season-long Pepperstone ATP Race To Turin, leaving him only one place behind Holger Rune and the reduce for the eight-man Nitto ATP Finals.
Rune will now take the court docket in Basel for his semi-final in opposition to Felix Auger-Aliassime as he appears to avenge his loss to the Canadian in final yr’s ultimate.
Hurkacz selected the laborious path to victory. He didn’t serve out the match at 5-3 within the third set after which didn’t convert two match factors on Humbert’s serve within the following recreation. He wanted an extra three match factors within the tie-break to clinch victory.
Within the quarter-finals Hurkacz dropped 23 aces on Dutchman Tallon Griekspoor however in opposition to the left-handed Humbert he managed simply eight, together with one on match level. He now has 958 aces for the yr as he makes an attempt to achieve 1,000 in a season for the primary time.
Hurkacz, who gained the Rolex Shanghai Masters title earlier this month, seeks his third title of the yr, second on the ATP 500 degree (Halle, 2022) and eighth general.