SHERBROOKE, March 11, 2018
Two lefties will compete in Sunday’s singles final of the $25,000 Subaru Sherbrooke Futures presented by Énergie 106.1, when Dominik Köpfer of Germany will take on US-American qualifier Michael Redlicki at the Christian Bourque indoor tennis courts of the Rock Forest Recreation Centre in Sherbrooke.
In Saturday’s first semi-final match, No. 5 seed Köpfer was facing US-American JC Aragone. Both players had relatively different paths to stage of the final four. Köpfer had dropped only one set since the start of the tournament with his longest match of the week lasting just over an hour and a half. Aragone, on the other hand, played a marathon match against the top seed Gleb Sakharov lasting just under three hours.
In their semi-final match, it was the German who jumped out to an early lead, but too many errors and a costly double fault brought the match back to even. The tight set required a tiebreak where Köpfer stepped up his game and overpowered his opponent. In the second, it was Aragone who experienced some trouble on serve, totalling four double faults and getting only 58 per cent of his first serves in. After a little over an hour of play, Köpfer booked his spot in the finals with his victory over the US-American by a score of 7-6(4), 6-3.
The second semi-final opposed Canadian Brayden Schnur, the tournament’s third seed, against the Michael Redlicki. Despite having no singles ranking at the start of the tournament, the 24-year-old US-American managed not only to make it out of the qualifying round, he also defeated the second and eighth seeds on his way to the semi-final. For his part, Schnur did not have an easy path to Saturday, with two of his matches going to three sets and having to play in two tiebreaks along the way.
The match was extremely close from start to finish, with neither playing willing to concede an inch. The first set required a tiebreak where Redlicki managed to get the minibreak needed to go ahead in the match. Schnur had to fight his way out of trouble early on in the second, battling back from 0-40 to remain on serve. After an hour and a half of play, Redlicki got the better of the Canadian in the end, securing a spot in his first career final on the professional circuit by a score of 7-6(4), 7-6(0).
The singles final between will begin at 1 p.m. local time. Köpfer and Redlicki will meet for the first time.
