Top seed Gasquet falls

NEW YORK: Top seed Richard Gasquet suffered a surprise 7-5 6-3 loss to an unsung John Millman in the quarter-finals of the Winston-Salem Open yesterday.

Millman, ranked 81st in the world, broke Gasquet five times in the match to reach his first career ATP semi-final.

Millman is an unlikely contender this week. He was knocked out in the second round of singles play at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, then had to get through qualifying to make the main draw last week in Cincinnati.

He won one main-draw match at the Western & Southern Open before falling to ninth-ranked Dominic Thiem of Austria.

Next up for Millman is a match-up with 16th seeded Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain, who knocked off Russia’s Andrey Kuznetsov 6-4 6-3.

Second-seeded Roberto Bautista Agut rolled past Taiwan’s Yen-Hsun Lu 6-3 6-2. The match was over in 61 minutes as Bautista Agut avoided ever facing a break point. He takes on ninth seeded Viktor Troicki who outplayed 15th seeded Fernando Verdasco of Spain 6-4 3-6 6-4 in the last quarter-final match.