ATLANTA: John Isner kept his Atlanta ATP title defence on track with a 7-6 (10/8), 6-4 quarter-final victory over Australian Marinko Matosevic on Friday.

A day after Isner fired 30 aces and still had to fight off two match points in a second-round win over Robby Ginepri, the towering American fired 17 aces and won 84 percent of his first-serve points in his win over Matosevic.

Isner, the champion in Atlanta in 2013 and runner-up to Mardy Fish in both 2010 and 2011, will face fellow American Jack Sock for a place in the final.

Sock rallied from an early 1-4 deficit to dispatch Slovakian Lukas Lacko 7-6 (8/6), 6-2.

Israel’s Dudi Sela booked a semi-final berth with a 7-5, 1-6, 6-2 upset of Canadian fourth seed Vasek Pospisil.

Sela notched his 100th tour-level match win and reached the fifth ATP semi-final of his career.

He’ll face Germany’s Benjamin Becker, a 6-4, 6-2 winner over Thiemo De Bakker of the Netherlands.

HAASE TO FACE MONACO

GSTAAD: Australian Open champion Stan Wawrinka confirmed on Friday that he is fit and ready for the final leg of the ATP season, starting with the Masters 1000 event in Canada.

Wawrinka, who reluctantly pleaded fatigue after Wimbledon, was to have played at this week’s Swiss Open in Gstaad, which lost its top two seeds as Mikhail Youzhny and Marcel Granollers both exited in the quarter-finals.

Dutchman Robin Haase, seeded seventh, won a replay of the 2013 final as he put out Youzhny 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, while Pablo Andujar won an all-Spanish contest with a defeat of number two Granollers, 7-5, 6-3.

Haase will next face Juan Monaco after the Argentine defeated two-time champion Thomaz Bellucci 7-6 (7-1), 6-1.

Andujar takes on fourth seed Fernando Verdasco, a winner over Serb Viktor Troicki, 6-4, 6-7 (7/9), 6-1.

SVITOLINA DISPATCHES PARMENTIER

BAKU: Elina Svitolina of Ukraine moved her Baku Cup title defence into the semi-finals by dispatching Pauline Parmentier of France 6-4, 6-4 on Friday.

Svitolina won her maiden title here last year, and became the only teenager to triumph on the WTA tour in 2013.

She could yet repeat the feat, as she doesn’t turn 20 until September, but has to get past 2010 French Open champion Francesca Schiavone on Saturday.

Schiavone reached her first semi-finals since September when she beat Kristina Mladenovic 6-3, 4-6, 6-0, avenging a three-set defeat to the Frenchwoman last week in Istanbul at the same quarterfinals stage.

The other semi-final match features 2012 champ Bojana Jovanovski of Serbia against Stefanie Voegele of Switzer­land, who passed the quarterfinals for the first time this season. Both took more than two hours to prevail.

Jovanovski defeated Japanese qualifier Misa Eguchi 4-6, 7-5, 6-3, while Voegele beat 2013 runner-up Shahar Peer of Israel 6-2, 2-6, 6-4.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2014