Mektic/Pavic Surge To Final In Belgrade

Top seeds Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic moved within one win of securing a first title since the Tokyo Olympics in July with a 7-6(3), 6-3 win over Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski at the Serbia Open in Belgrade.

The Croatian pairing, which ended 2021 as the No. 1 doubles team in the ATP Rankings after picking up nine tour-level titles last year, has struggled for its best form this season. Two breaks of serve in the semi-final of the ATP 250 event on Friday were enough for them to reach their second championship match of the year, however, as they continued a strong showing on debut in Belgrade.

Mektic and Pavic will face Ariel Behar and Gonzalo Escobar in Saturday’s championship match after the Uruguayan-Ecuadorian team ousted Tomislav Brkic and Nikola Cacic 6-2, 7-6(3). Behar and Escobar, who also reached the final in Belgrade in last year, are chasing a third ATP Tour title together having lifted the trophies in Delray Beach and Marbella in 2021.

At the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell, Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies overcame defending champions Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah in a rematch of the 2021 final to seal a last-four spot at the ATP 500 event.

Krawietz and Mies are two-time Grand Slam champions on the clay at Roland Garros and the German pairing had to use all their experience on the red dirt to hold off the fourth-seeded Colombians in a 6-4, 7-5 win. Krawietz and Mies saved all 10 break points they faced in a 90-minute victory to level the ATP Head2Head series between the two teams at 1-1 — Cabal and Farah triumphed in the only previous meeting between the teams at the 2019 Nitto ATP Finals.

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Also in Barcelona, Marcelo Arevalo and Jean-Julien Rojer continued their strong 2022 with a 6-3, 7-6(4) win over a pair of Top 50 singles stars in Pedro Martinez and Lorenzo Sonego.

Arevalo and Rojer are hunting their third title of the year after back-to-back triumphs on the hard courts in Dallas and Delray Beach in February. The El Salvadorian-Dutch duo proved its clay-court pedigree with a run to the semi-finals at last week’s Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters, and the pair held their nerve on Friday to rally from 0/4 in the second set tie-break by winning seven straight points.

Their semi-final opponents will be Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski, the in-form Dutch-British team chasing a fourth tour-level title of the year. Koolhof and Skupski advanced via walkover from their quarter-final, as did Mexican-Argentine duo Santiago Gonzalez and Andres Molteni.