By Erik Gudris | Friday, July 25, 2014

 

Top seed John Isner will face fellow American Jack Sock in the Atlanta semifinals.

Photo Credit: Getty

Defending champion John Isner will meet fellow American Jack Sock in the BB&T Atlanta Open semifinals. Both men struggled early in their quarterfinals before pulling through with straight set wins.

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Isner faced off against No. 8 seed Marinko Matosevic of Australia. Matosevic broke Isner in the opening game and almost went up 3-0 in the first set. Isner recovered and eventually broke back.

Matosevic forced Isner into a tiebreak and for a while the Australian looked poised to close it out. But tight play from Matosevic, including striking a double fault down set point, gave Isner the breaker 7-6(8).

Isner took charge in the second set. With his 17th ace of the day, the top seed served out the 7-6(8), 6-4 win.

"I knew he was struggling out there a little bit and he knew I was struggling out there a little bit," Isner said later to ATP.com. "A lot of times those situations are a big advantage for me because I can muster up enough energy to pop some big serves in."

Next up for Isner is his friend Jack Sock who beat him earlier in Newport a few weeks ago.

Like Isner, Sock needed some time to get his game going against Lukas Lacko in their quarterfinal.

Sock fell behind 1-4 before pulling back to even in the first set. In the resulting tiebreak, Sock came up with a backhand winner creating a set point for himself. A Lacko error on the next point handed Sock the set 7-6(6).

Sock earned an early break in the second set. But Lacko broke back thanks to several errors from Sock. Sock would benefit from Lacko suffering a drop in form as the American broke Lacko to love for a 4-2 lead.

Soon, Sock wrapped up the 7-6(6), 6-2 victory putting him into his second semifinal of the year.

Earlier, Benjamin Becker defeated Thiemo De Bakker 6-4, 6-2 to reach the semifinals. He awaits the winner of No. 4 seed Vasek Pospisil versus Dudi Sela.