MIAMI: Roberto Bautista Agut gets another shot at the Winston-Salem ATP title, booking his second finals berth in as many years on Friday with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Jan-Lennard Struff.
The top-seeded Spaniard will meet Damir Dzumhur on Saturday after the Bosnian rallied for a 1-6, 7-5, 6-3 victory over Briton Kyle Edmund to reach his first ATP final.
Bautista Agut, who fell to fellow Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta in last year’s Winston-Salem final, made just nine unforced errors, calmly recovering after an early break in the second set to seal the win in one hour and 13 minutes.
He showed imagination as well as consistency, keeping match-point alive with a shot between his legs from the baseline before racing forward to hit the match-winner off a drop shot.
“I’m happy to be in the final again,” Bautista Agut, ranked 15th in the world, said. “It’s going to be tough, but I’m ready.”
Dzumhur, ranked 67th, got off to a slow start against Edmund as fatigue caught up with him.
He arrived in Winston-Salem on Monday after reaching the final of a lower-level Challenger tournament in the Dominican Republic at the weekend.
“I was a little bit tired,” Dzumhur said of his listless first set. “In second set I tried to hold my serve and I broke him in a game when he was 40-15 up, and in that moment everything changed.
“My first final, this is a special day for me,” he said. --AFP