Baez completes double duty to reach Cordoba SFs

As the sun finally came out Friday at the Cordoba Open, so too did Sebastian Baez's level heat up at the ATP 250 event. Aiming to defend his title, the Argentine scored two wins to return to the semi-finals.

A first-round bye and rain on Thursday meant that the second seed Baez would not play his first match of the week until Friday, perhaps explaining the 23-year-old's slow start but strong finish to rally past Bolivia's Hugo Dellien 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 after two hours, 15 minutes.

"It's hard, but it's something I can manage," Baez said of starting his title quest on the fifth day of the tournament. "The rain, the weather is like this. I'm happy to take this match because it was so close and I'm happy to be in the next round."

The Last 4️⃣ Standing!@CordobaOpen | #CórdobaOpen pic.twitter.com/fq7PIZSTZv

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For the second consecutive year, Dellien fell to Baez in Cordoba, where he lost to the eventual champion in the semi-finals last year. Dellien, 30, was competing in his first tournament since his wife gave birth to twin girls last month. 

Baez returned to court Friday evening for a first-time Lexus ATPHead2Head meeting with countryman Facundo Diaz Acosta, who already spent nearly three hours on court earlier in the day to defeat Thiago Agustin Tirante 6-2, 6-7(5), 6-2. Baez was sharper in his second appearance and ran away with a 6-3, 6-1 victory to close the day's play.

"I felt better on the second one," he said post-match. "Of course the first round of the tournament always is difficult. But I'm happy to go from down to up."

Baez's semi-final opponent will be Argentine-born Italian Luciano Darderi, a qualifier who beat seventh seed Yannick Hanfmann 7-6(2), 6-1 in his first tour-level quarter-final. Darderi was the only man to record a win on Thursday before rain halted play in Cordoba.

The opposite semi-final will be an all-Argentine affair between unseeded opponents Federico Coria and Facundo Bagnis.

Coria upset third seed Tomas Martin Etcheverry 6-3, 6-4 to reach the Cordoba last four for a third time, tying Albert Ramos-Vinolas for the most semi-final appearances in tournament history.

Bagnis beat Jaume Munar 7-5, 6-4 to advance to his third tour-level semi-final, having previously reached that stage in Cordoba in 2021. At 33 years and 11 months old, he is the oldest Argentine ATP Tour semi-finalist since Carlos Berlocq, 34, in 2017 at Buenos Aires.