Diallo dreams on! Canadian sinks Cerundolo to reach maiden Tour final in Almaty

p a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/gabriel-diallo/d0f6/overview'Gabriel Diallo/a racked up a double milestone on Saturday at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/almaty/9410/overview'Almaty Open/a. /p

p The Canadian sunk a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/francisco-cerundolo/c0au/overview'Francisco Cerundolo/a 6-4, 6-2 at the indoor hard-court ATP 250 to reach his maiden ATP Tour championship match. With his comprehensive 68-minute triumph against the fourth-seeded Cerundolo, Diallo also guaranteed he will on Monday break into the Top 100 of the PIF ATP Rankings for the first time. /p

p “A lot of joy, a lot of excitement. A lot of relief as well,” said Diallo, when asked about his emotions after his semi-final win. “I’ve been playing some good tennis and I’m very happy to see that the results are going my way. It means the world to me, especially here. I’ve got family members here that I’ve never met before, so obviously it’s pretty cool that they came and I’m having a great week here. I’m extremely happy.” /p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"An unforgettable moment ✨ br /br /a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/gabriel-diallo/d0f6/overview'Gabriel Diallo/a reaches his first Tour level final after dismissing Cerundolo 6-4 6-2.a href="https://twitter.com/ktf_kz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@ktf_kz/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AlmatyOpen?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#AlmatyOpen/a a href="https://t.co/I5rvuCt72P"pic.twitter.com/I5rvuCt72P/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1847630715334140066?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"October 19, 2024/a/blockquote script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

p Diallo converted all three break points he earned against Cerundolo, according to Infosys ATP Stats. The big-serving 23-year-old, who had not reached an ATP Tour quarter-final prior to this week, has risen 31 spots No. 87 in the PIF ATP Live Rankings as a result of his Almaty run so far. /p

p “It’s super special. Obviously the Top 100 is something that you try to break. It’s a pretty big milestone,” said Diallo. “It gets you into the bigger events and the Slams, which is always more fun, more stimulating. I’m super happy for myself and for my team. We’ve been working really hard to get where we are right now, and hopefully it can be the beginning of something special.” /p

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p After becoming the seventh Canadian to reach an ATP Tour final this century, Diallo will take on a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/karen-khachanov/ke29/overview'Karen Khachanov/a in the title match. The third seed held off a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/aleksandar-vukic/v832/overview'Aleksandar Vukic/a 6-7(3), 6-3, 6-4 in the second semi-final of the day in Kazakhstan. /p

p Khachanov led 5-1 in the deciding set but was forced to repel a late comeback from Vukic, who had prevailed in the pair’s prior meeting in June in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. After sealing a hard-earned two-hour, 14-minute triumph, the 28-year-old Khachanov advanced to his ninth tour-level final. /p

p A six-time ATP Tour champion, Khachanov will head into Sunday’s title decider with a 1-0 Lexus ATP Head2Head lead over Diallo. He overcame the Canadian in straight sets in their only previous meeting in August in Montreal. /p

p [NEWSLETTER FORM] /p