Gasquet beats Mathieu to retain Open Sud de France title

“It’s always delicate to play against a very good player who you’ve never beaten before, but I played a solid match”, Gasquet said.

Mathieu, who won the last of his four titles back in 2007, continued to cause Gasquet problems in the second set, but failed to take his two break-point chances.

“(Mathieu) hit the ball hard, at the begining I could not compete but then I served much better”, said Gasquet, now a four times victor in Montpellier after titles in 2006, 13 and 15.

Gasquet, now ranked 10th, also won the Montpellier title in 2013.

Brown next plays Ruben Bemelmans, who advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-3 win over Jan-Lennard Struff.

But the momentum quickly shifted in favour of Gasquet, with Brown only winning four more games in the match as the three-time grand slam finalist kept his hopes of winning the trophy for the third time in four years alive. “I had to dig deep to get through it”.

The Spaniard was next due to face sixth seed Gilles Muller of Luxembourg.

That set up an all-French final against veteran Paul-Henri Mathieu.

Sixth seed Paolo Lorenzi of Italy rallied from a set down to oust top seed Bernard Tomic of Australia 6-7 (5/7), 7-5, 6-3 at the Ecuador Open at Club Jacaranda Cumbaya on Friday and advance to the semi-finals.

Mathieu led 3-0 and 5-3 early on, but proved unable to take advantage.