Top seed Roger Federer reached the Halle Open semifinals on Friday, beating defending champion Florian Mayer 6-3 6-4 and edging closer to a ninth title at the Wimbledon tune-up event.
The 18-time grand slam champion, whose last title at Halle was in 2015, skipped the entire claycourt season after winning the Australian Open and claiming titles at Indian Wells and Miami this year, to prepare for grass.
He will now face rapidly rising talent Karen Khachanov, who won his all-Russian quarterfinal against Andrey Rublev 7-6(8) 4-6 6-3 to reach his first tour semi-final of the year.
Federer, who has yet to drop a set in Halle after crashing out of Stuttgart in his first match back last week, limited his serve-and-volley game against the German who is a fine returner and Mayer was broken quickly as his opponent won the first set.
The 33-year-old Mayer squandered two break points at 1-0 in the second set and paid the price as Federer broke again and never relinquished his advantage to win in just over an hour.
Frenchman Richard Gasquet also reached the last four, edging past Dutchman Robin Haase, who had eliminated second seed Dominic Thiem in the previous round, 6-1 3-6 6-1 and looked to be hitting top grasscourt form at just the right time.
Gasquet will now play the winner of the last quarterfinal between local favourite Alexander Zverev and Spaniard Roberto Bautista-Agut later on Friday.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Meanwhile, Luxembourg left-hander Gilles Muller continued scything his way through the grasscourt season when he beat former champion Sam Querrey at the Aegon Championships at Queen's Club on Friday.
The late-blooming 34-year-old chalked up a seventh successive victory on the green stuff as he beat the powerful American 6-4 7-6(5) to reach the semi-finals.
Next in Muller's firing line will be fourth seed Marin Cilic, one of three former champions to reach the last eight, who was equally impressive in dispatching American Donald Young 6-4 7-5 on another sunny day at the prestigious London club.
Grigor Dimitrov, who won the title in 2014, plays young Russian Daniil Medvedev later before Spain's 35-year-old Feliciano Lopez takes on seventh seed Tomas Berdych.
Muller had never won an ATP title before this year.
He opened the year in style by putting that statistic to bed with a title run in Sydney, and last week ruled on the grasscourts of Den Bosch where he beat serving demon Ivo Karlovic in the final.
Now, after beating Querrey, he is closing in on a third.
There was little between them and the match boiled down to one poor service game by Querrey early in the first set when Muller broke to love with a beautifully angled winner after chasing down a drop volley by the American.
There were no breaks in the second set although Muller had to fend off two set points at 5-6, the first after turning around a rally Querrey had been in control of with a crafty lob and the second with an unreturnable serve.
Muller, who cracked down 12 aces with a swinging serve that is tough to read, finished the job with a feathered drop volley.
"I'm going to play semi-finals here for the first time tomorrow. I lost in the quarter-finals for the two years, so I'm really happy that I was able to go one step further," he said.
Muller confirmed he had pulled out of next week's Eastbourne tournament to rest up ahead of Wimbledon.

Source: .khaleej Times