Kazakh tennis player Alexander Shevchenko scored two consecutive singles victories on July 17 at the ATP 250 tournament in Gstaad, Switzerland, to reach the semifinals, reports the website infohub.kz.
Shevchenko, ranked 100th in the ATP rankings, began his campaign at the EFG Swiss Open Gstaad (prize fund: more than €612,000) with a win over world No. 132 Alexander Muller of France. On July 16, he started his second-round match against Swiss Dominic Stricker (world No. 360), but due to heavy rain, the match was postponed to July 17. In the day session, Shevchenko won in straight sets to advance to the quarterfinals.
This quarterfinal could have been an all-Kazakh affair if top seed Alexander Bublik, the world No. 11, had defeated world No. 90 Quentin Halys of France in the second round. However, Bublik lost in three sets, making Halys Shevchenko's opponent. Due to the schedule shift, the match was moved to Friday evening. Previously, Shevchenko and Halys had met four times, with the Frenchman winning three, including in February 2026.
The first set of the quarterfinal was tightly contested: neither player made errors on serve, and after 12 games, a tiebreak ensued. On the tiebreak, Shevchenko came back from three points down to win it 7-6 (7-5). In the second set, Halys made a service error midway through, leading to a 6-3 rout, and Shevchenko claimed the semifinal berth.
In the next round, Shevchenko will face the winner of the quarterfinal between fourth seed Arthur Rinderknech of France (world No. 28) and Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece (world No. 85). At the time of writing, Tsitsipas led the first set 5-3. Another Kazakh, Amir Omarkhanov, ended his singles run on July 17 at the M15 tournament under the World Tennis (formerly the International Tennis Federation, ITF, recently renamed) in Monastir, Tunisia. Omarkhanov (world No. 641) was the third seed but unexpectedly lost to France's Charles Bertimon (world No. 1101) in straight sets, 5-7, 3-6.