Verdasco Topples Thiem In Rio

Dominic Thiem entered his semi-final at the Rio Open presented by Claro 30-5 on clay since the beginning of last season. Those losses came against Rafael Nadal (3), Novak Djokovic and David Goffin. It didn’t hurt that he was the defending champion in Rio de Janeiro, either, as well as last week’s winner in Buenos Aires.

But the Austrian was shocked by eighth seed Fernando Verdasco, who delivered a blistering performance to oust the second seed 6-4 6-0 on Friday evening. The Spaniard moves into his first ATP World Tour semi-final since 2017 Stockholm as he pursues his first final since losing to Andy Murray last year in Dubai.

It was just the third time that Thiem has lost a set 0-6 on clay at the tour-level, with both of those instances coming last year against Djokovic (Rome) and Nadal (Roland Garros).

Verdasco, who has now won six consecutive sets against Thiem, extends his FedEx ATP Head2Head series lead against the World No. 6 to 3-0. The left-hander next plays the winner between fifth seed Fabio Fognini and Aljaz Bedene.

Based on the results so far this week it appeared Friday’s second quarter-final at the Rio Open presented by Claro would be a thriller. But sixth seed Diego Schwartzman moved past the dangerous Gael Monfils 6-3, 6-4 in just 83 minutes.

“Against Gael it’s never easy,” Schwartzman said. “The match was weird. Sometimes we played bad points, sometimes we played good points. He was a break up both sets and then I came back and I am really happy for that because after that I started to play well in both sets.”

The Argentine is into his first tour-level semi-final since 2017 Antwerp a week after advancing to his first quarter-final of the season in Buenos Aires. Schwartzman is pursuing his second ATP World Tour title (2016 Istanbul).

It was still a strong week for Monfils, who saved a match point in the first round against Horacio Zeballos before moving past top seed and World No. 3 Marin Cilic in a rain-delayed second-round encounter. The Frenchman has made at least the quarter-finals at four of the five events he has played this season, with his lone loss before that stage coming against former World No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the second round of the Australian Open.

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Schwarztman will face Chilean Nicolas Jarry, who upset seventh seed Pablo Cuevas 7-5, 6-3 to make the first tour-level semi-final of his career. The 22-year-old advanced to his first quarter-final two weeks ago at the Ecuador Open in Quito, where he lost to eventual champion Roberto Carballes Baena.

“This is a great victory for me,” Jarry said. “I played very solid. I stayed very strong with my head…. I’m very happy with the way that I served this match. It’s better than the other ones, so I hope to continue serving like this.”

Jarry saved all four break points he faced in the match, breaking once per set to move past the 2016 champion. It will be his first FedEx ATP Head2Head meeting against Schwartzman.