Juan Pablo Varillas | Peruvian tennis advances to the semifinals of the Sanremo Challenger in Italy | Peruvian Tennis | ATP | RMMD EMCC | FULL-SPORTS

John Paul Varillas, currently number 88 in the world, is close to playing a new final in his professional career. The first Peruvian racket has already settled in the semifinals of the Sanremo Tennis Cupin Italy, where despite not having a lucid game on the clay surface, the hierarchy of ‘Juanpi’ has led him to overcome his third consecutive ‘match’ in this 125 class Challenger, the highest in this Tour of the Association of Professional Tennis Players (ATP).

This Friday, in the quarterfinals of the Italian contest, Varillas had to go from less to more against the local Andreas Vavassori (202nd ATP). And it is that after falling in the first round, he reacted in the following ones to prevail with partials of 3-6, 6-3 and 6-4, in two hours 22 minutes of play at the Circolo Sanremo, on the Mediterranean coast, to the northwest from Italy. This was the third match in which he needed a third set to celebrate (the previous one was in the round of 16, against another Italian, Andrea Pellegrino).

Of course, the closing of the ‘match’ was heart-stopping, with up to five ‘match points’ saved by the local tennis player, with the support of his fans. In this way, Juan Pablo matches the statistics against Vavassori, with two wins each. What’s more, the last two times they met, Varillas came out unscathed (the other occurred last year, in the ‘qualification’ of the EFG Swiss Open Gstaad, an ATP 250). Now, the 27-year-old tennis player must recover and take the field to face the Belgian Kimmer Coppejansnumber 225 in the world, who came to integrate the Top 100 of the ranking in 2015 (97th).

It should be noted that Coppejans has just eliminated Hungarian Zsombor Piros (185th) in the quarterfinals of the Sanremo Tennis Cup with partial scores of 6-1, 6-7(2) and 7-6(4), in two hours 37 minutes of play. That is to say, Kimmer will also face the semifinals after great physical exhaustion, as happened with Varillas. This match will be played after the other ‘semis’ key, between the Frenchman Luca Van Assche (108th) and the Czech Vit Kopriva (165th), which starts at 7 in the morning today (Peruvian time).

in full ascent

With this valuable victory, Varillas settles for the first time in the 2023 season in a semifinal of an ATP tournament. That’s not all, because Juan Pablo is also making sure he stays in the top 100. After eliminating the Italian Andres Vavassori, ‘Juanpi’ is placed in the Live Ranking of the ATP in the position 93 and could continue climbing positions to surpass this Saturday to Kimmer Coppejans. To be exact, if he achieved his fourth victory in the Sanremo Challenger, the first Peruvian racket would be number 88, behind the Swiss Stan Wawrinkawho at some point became number three in the world.

As recalled, the great objective of Juan Pablo Varillas in this part of the season is to ensure his presence in the main draw of Roland Garros, the second Grand Slam of 2023, which will be played on Sunday, May 28 in Paris, France. It should be noted that the cut of the list of participants (the 128 best positioned in the ranking) in the contest will be on Monday, April 17. In these weeks, Varillas does not defend points on the circuit (he is playing for the first time in the Grand Prinx Hassan II and the Srpska Open) and his appearance at Roland Garros is almost assured.

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