Delbonis Defeats Albert Montanes to Reach the Brazil Open Semifinals

There’s no crying for Argentina’s Federico Delbonis, only cheering…

The 23-year-old professional tennis player soundly defeated Spain’s Albert Montanes in just over an hour to advance to the Brazil Open semifinals.

Federico Delbonis

Delbonis, currently ranked No. 61 in the world, beat Montanes in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3.

He’s now one win away from reaching the second ATP tournament final of his career as he continues his quest to win his first career title.

Delbonis will next face either home-crowd favorite Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil or Martin Klizan of Slovakia.

Meanwhile, it wasn’t such a positive experience for his fellow countrymen…

Top-seeded Tommy Haas came back to defeat Horacio Zeballos of Argentina 6-3, 5-7, 6-2 to advance to the semifinals.

Haas broke Zeballos’ serve twice in a row in the decisive set to close the match and take a step closer to his second final of the year.

Haas will next play Paolo Lorenzi of Italy, who reached his first ATP semifinal with an upset 7-6 (6), 6-7 (4), 6-4 win over fourth-seeded Juan Monaco of Argentina.

“Lorenzi has been around for a long time so this is a goal I’m sure he has been waiting to achieve for a lifetime,” Haas said. “He has nothing to lose and is going to try to go one more and get to his first ATP tour final. He is a dangerous player. I’m going to have to try to play some of my best tennis.”

The 114th-ranked Lorenzi broke Monaco’s serve to go up 4-3 in the final set and held on to close the match in 2 hours, 34 minutes at the Ibirapuera Arena.

The 32-year-old Italian squandered a match point before losing the second set, but was in control in the third to pick up the win in the ATP 250 tournament in South America’s biggest city.

Lorenzi served 12 aces en route to his first pro semifinal after five career quarterfinal losses.

“I’m very happy to finally break through to the semifinals,” Lorenzi said. “I’ve had a lot of opportunities before but was never able to come up with the victory at this stage. For sure this is one of my greatest weeks on the tour.”

The 43rd-ranked Monaco was trying to win his 200th clay-court match. He is the fifth-highest winner on the surface, behind Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer, Tommy Robredo and Nicolas Almagro.

Monaco had a set point in the first set but couldn’t capitalize on it.

“It was a very close match, he had his chances in the first set and I had mine in the second, it was very difficult,” Lorenzi said.

Nadal, the defending champion, is not playing at the clay-court tournament this year. He chose to play at the first edition of the Rio Open, which he won last week.

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