Carreno celebrates his return to the semi-finals in Winston-Salem | ATP Tour

Winston-Salem

Carreño celebrates his return to the semifinals in Winston-Salem

The Spaniard will play on Friday against Alex Michelsen, from the #NextGenATP

August 23, 2024

Pablo Carreño Busta has now won more matches at this year’s Winston-Salem Open than he had all season before this week.

The Spaniard, who entered the event with a 3-4 record in 2024, claimed his fourth win of the week on Thursday by beating American Learner Tien 6-4, 6-2 to secure his third career qualification for the semi-finals of this event.

The No. 299 in the PIF ATP Rankings, who played his first ATP Tour tournament since early 2023 at Roland Garros due to tendinitis in his right arm, had total dominance against one of the tournament’s revelations since its qualifying phase.

She was always ahead on the scoreboard, even after her break in the opening game of the match. Her only moment of doubt came at the end of the match, when she lost her serve at 3-2. But she responded with a break at 4-2 and saved four break points when serving for the match.

After one hour and 25 minutes of play, Carreno Busta sealed his 275th victory on the ATP Tour, and his first qualification to a semi-final on the circuit since August 2022, when he won his biggest title so far in his career at the ATP Masters 1000 in Montreal.

Keep going unstoppable ⚡️⚡️

🇪🇸@pablocarreno91 gets its first semi-final advance since August 2022 👏@TennisTV | @WSOpenpic.twitter.com/NGhzBAYwqb

— ATP Tour in Spanish (@ATPTour_ES) August 23, 2024

This victory also allows him to rise to No. 213 in the live rankings, when at the beginning of the month he was outside the Top 800. One more victory, on Friday, would help him break into the Top 200, and take him to his first final since Barcelona 2022.

His next opponent will be local Alex Michelsen, with whom he has no history and who defeated Christopher Eubanks with scores of 7-5, 6-7(6), 7-6(5).

The other semi-final of the tournament will be contested by Belgian David Goffin and Italian Lorenzo Sonego. The Lexus ATP HeadToHead between the two is 1-0 in favour of the former, who defeated Australian Rinky Hijikata with scores of 6-1, 6-3. Sonego, for his part, defeated Pavel Kotov on Thursday with scores of 6-3, 7-5.