John Isner beats Marcos Baghdatis to win third-straight Atlanta Open title

Big-serving John Isner stayed on track for his third consecutive Atlanta Open title when he outlasted fellow American Denis Kudla in a tight semi-final on Sunday (AEST).

Isner is trying to reach the Atlanta final for the fifth time in six years.

But he opened the decisive tiebreaker by breaking Muller’s serve, and ended the two-hour, 36-minute match on his own serve on his first match point.

Isner ripped 13 aces for 90 in four matches.

Isner lost only one point on serve in the opening set and didn’t let Baghdatis mount any momentum amid a 6-3, 6-3 win at Atlantic Station.

The most successful doubles team in history beat Donald Young and Christopher Eubanks 6-2, 6-4 for their record 942nd career win together.

“It’s an important title for me”, Nadal said.

The seventh-seeded Muller entered Saturday as the only Atlanta player yet to lose serve, and trails only Isner in aces (77-52). The defending champion fought from being down 30-0 in the third set and converted three break points out of nine chances to take the match in an hour and 43 minutes. “It is faster. It helped my serve so much. I felt like I did that out there, for the most part”, said Isner, who heads to Washington this week for another hardcourt tournament on the road to the US Open. Isner, though, then held serve and broke back in a game where he saved a long deep ball by popping it high in the sky to set up an eventual passing shot that surprised Stepanek. Sock, now at a singles ranking of 35, found himself quickly exhausted by weather and humidity, losing the momentum he had amassed in the first set.

Unlike Sock, Kudla had to play his way through the qualifying rounds at the Open, and the Ukrainian credits this with giving him the rhythm he needed going into his match against the American. He did the same Friday after beating second-seed Vasek Pospisil in straight sets.

Thiem is top-seeded next week in another clay-court event, at Kitzbuehel in his native Austria.

Gasparyan had never won a main-draw match at the WTA level before this tournament, while Tig – a qualifier – was also playing in her first tour final.

Israel’s Dudi Sela, who fell in the 2014 final to Isner, beat Becker, from Germany, 7-5, 6-3, and Ricardis Berankis of Lithuania rolled past Johnson, 6-4, 6-2.

That came in the second set.

The 112th-ranked Gasparyan said “it’s been an fantastic tournament for me”.