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The French pair of Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut have moved to the semi-finals of the Nitto ATP Finals for the very first time in their fourth consecutive appearance at the year-end event. They are scheduled to meet Colombian duo Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah on Saturday.
Herbert and Mahut only needed to win a single set in their final round-robin match to make the semis but they achieved more than that.
Their triumph over American duo Mike Bryan and Jack Sock by virtue of a 6-2, 6-2 victory in just less than an hour catapulted them to top of the Mark Knowles/Daniel Nestor group with a 2-1 win-loss record, having lost their opening round-robin match to top seeds Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic. The final group match of the Nitto ATP Finals 2018 pitted the two teams who both were in the reckoning to take the top position in their group.
Bryan and Sock will end their partnership after the tournament as Mike Bryan is set to reunite with his twin Bob who is set to return from a lengthy spell on the sidelines due to injury. Bryan and Sock playing possibly in their final tournament as a pair will now face off against the winners of the Llodra / Santoro Group - Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares.
It was sweet revenge for Herbert and Mahut as they avenged their defeat to Bryan and Sock in last month's Shanghai Rolex Masters. Two breaks of serve in each of the two sets enabled the French pairing to win comfortably. Herbert and Mahut just lost 3 points on the first serve to aggregate a remarkable 89% first serve points conversion.
This is the fifth time that a French pair has entered the semi-finals of the ATP Finals. Herbert and Mahut join the pair: Forget-Leconte (1986), Delaitre-Santoro (1998), Llodra-Santoro (2003) and Benneteau-Roger-Vasselin (2014).
