Laaksonen marches on to semi-finals at Roland Garros

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Finnish tennis junior Henri Laaksonen booked a semi-final appearance in the boys' singles at the French Open in Paris on Thursday, with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Filip Horansky of Slovakia.
      The 17-year-old, ranked 49th in the world coming into the tournament, has now won four matches on the clay, including a second-round triumph over the 4th seed Shuichi Sekiguchi of Japan.
     
The unseeded Finn will now meet another unseeded player in the semis, after Sweden's Daniel Berta overcame Richard Becker of Germany 6-3, 6-3.
      Becker - yet another unseeded player - had earlier knocked out the top seed in the tournament, which has so far been remarkable for upsets. None of the seeds in the top half of the draw made it through to the last eight of the competition.
     
Laaksonen looked to be cruising to another easy win on Thursday and had match point at 5-0 in the second set, but his opponent clawed back to 5-2, where Laaksonen missed another two match points before wrapping things up at the fourth attempt at 6-4.
     
The young man from Hyvinkää is the first Finnish player to reach the last four of the boys' singles at the French Open.
      Last year Henri Kontinen won the boys' doubles in Paris with partner Christopher Rungkat of Indonesia.
      Kontinen was also the beaten finalist in the boys' singles at Wimbledon in 2008, and the Kontinen/Rungkat pairing were finalists in the boys' doubles at the US Open in New York.
      The only Finnish player to have ever won a boys' tournament at a Grand Slam event is Jarkko Nieminen, who took the US Open title in 1999.
      Nieminen was not in the men's singles or doubles draw for the French Open this year, as he is recuperating from a wrist operation.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Henri Laaksonen through to last eight in boys´ singles in Paris (3.6.2009)

Links:
  Roland Garros - Henri Laaksonen

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