Horacio Zeballos from Mar del Plata and Marcel Granollers from Catalonia, third seeds, reached this Tuesday the Australian Open doubles semifinals by defeating the Australian John Peers and the Slovakian Filip Polasek (5th) in straight sets.
In one hour and 48 minutes of play, the Spanish-Argentine duo prevailed with partials of 7-6 (5) and 6-4, and will have this Thursday a difficult stop in search of a new ending.
Is that In front will be the locals Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis, who have revolutionized the public, after beating the German Tim Puetz and the also Australian Michael Venus (6th) by 7-5, 3-6 and 6-3 in a duel that was followed with passion at the KIA Arena, with a roar that reached the Rod Laver Arena during the match between the Spanish Rafael Nadal and the Canadian Denis Shapovalov.
As usual, Kyrgios took all the flashes during the match. Although this time it was not for a luxury. is that the bad boy Australian finished off an easy shot with a violent volley that ended up hitting a child in the stands who immediately burst into tears, ball in hand. The tennis player clutched his face as if in repentance and quickly went to get a spare racket from his bag and took it to that sector so that they could give it to the boy, earning the applause of those present. Once the meeting was over, he approached again to greet the purrete.
It was not the only controversy starring Kyrgios during the match, since the number 259 in the world in doubles he quarreled with the match judge and the people “threw” him against him. “You have no idea what you’re doing”, fired during a passage that ended with his racket crashing to the ground. After each controversial decision, the public responded by booing the umpire French. As a counterpart, for each point achieved by Kyrgios, the locals lowered the “siuuu” song, popularized by Cristiano Ronaldo.
Meanwhile, for Zeballos, this result allows him to complete a new milestone in his career as a doubles player: the left-hander reached semi-finals at all four Grand Slams it’s from the season.
In 2013 he did it in Roland Garros along with the Uruguayan Pablo Cuevas; at US Open with Eduardo Schwank from Rosario in 2010 and with Granollers in 2019 (runners-up); while together with the Spanish he also achieved it in 2021 in Wimbledon (runners-up).
Zeballos has not yet been able to get rid of the thorn of winning a Grand Slam doubles title, after the two finals he lost to Granollers at the US Open and Wimbledon. In contrast, the man from Mar del Plata does have five Masters 1000 wins, four with Granollers and one with Nikola Mektic.
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