HOUSTON: Norway´s Casper Ruud outlasted Spain´s Jaume Munar 6-2, 2-6, 7-6 (7/4) on Saturday to reach the ATP Dallas Open final.
World number five Ruud advanced to face the winner of a later semi-final between third-seeded defending champion Tommy Paul of the United States and Canada´s Denis Shapovalov, who ousted fourth-ranked American Taylor Fritz in the second round.
“Second and third set (Munar) really stepped it up,” Ruud said. “He kind of fired up, I played a little bit of a poor game. I went for a little too much, the right play but just made unforced errors. Some really close games in the third.”
Munar served for the match in the 10th game of the final set but Ruud broke back level to 5-5 as they battled into a tie-breaker. “I know what the feeling is like,” Ruud said. “You can get tight. You kind of see the finish line a few yards in front of you and then you kind of stumble. I´ve done it myself and I was fortunate to be on the right side of it today.”
Ruud hit a backhand down-the-line winner to grab a 4-2 tie-breaker lead, took a 5-3 edge when Munar was wide with a backhand volley and went to 6-3 on an overhead smash. Two points later, the Spaniard netted a forehand to hand Ruud the victory after two and a half hours, falling to 1-4 all-time against the Norwegian.
Ruud seeks his 13th career ATP title and a third consecutive finals win after triumphs last year at Barcelona and Geneva. Ruud is 4-2 against Paul in career ATP matches and 2-0 against Shapovalov.
Ninth-ranked Paul, in his first ATP event as a top-10 player, seeks an eighth ATP final and fifth tour title following Queen´s and a second Stockholm Open crown last year. Shapovalov seeks his eighth ATP final and a third ATP title after Stockholm in 2019 and last November´s Belgrade Open. Canadian Denis Shapovalov continued his giant-killing run at the ATP Dallas Open on Saturday, beating defending champion Tommy Paul 7-5, 6-3 to book a title clash with second-seeded Casper Ruud.
Norway´s Ruud out-lasted Spain´s Jaume Munar 6-2, 2-6, 7-6 (7/4) to reach the final. Unseeded Shapovalov, who ousted world number four Taylor Fritz in the second round, needed just an hour and a half to get past a second top-10 opponent in a week in ninth-ranked Paul.