Lucas Pouille will play in his third ATP World Tour final of the season on Sunday after ousting countryman Benoit Paire 7-6(5), 7-5 during the MercedesCup semi-finals in Stuttgart on Saturday. The 23-year-old Pouille hit 13 aces and saved both break points to advance to his fifth ATP World Tour final.

He is 2-2 in title matches for his career and 1-1 this season. Pouille beat Brit Aljaz Bedene on clay in April to win the inaugural Gazprom Hungarian Open in Budapest. The Frenchman fell to countryman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga during the Open 13 Marseille title match in Metz in February.

The fourth-seeded Pouille, who saved a match point in his opener against German Jan-Lennard Struff, will meet Spaniard Feliciano Lopez in the grass-court final. Lopez prevailed in a battle of hard-charging left-handers, edging German Mischa Zverev 6-7(2), 7-6(4), 7-5 in two hours and four minutes.

The title match will mark Lopez’s first ATP World Tour final of the season. He is 5-11 in finals but hasn’t played in a title match since last August in Los Cabos (l. to Karlovic). Lopez beat Robin Haase last July to win the Gstaad title.

“The match was so close from the beginning to the end. I was able to connect on great returns in the last game,” said Lopez, who broke Zverev in the final game.

The 6’2” Lopez improved to 3-0 against Zverev in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series. The 29-year-old Zverev was looking to reach his second final of the season after falling to Stan Wawrinka in the Banque Eric Sturdza Geneva Open last month.

After the disappointment of his opening-round exit last week in Stuttgart, Roger Federer is looking to make amends next week as the top seed at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle.

The Swiss is an eight-time former champion at this ATP World Tour 500 grass-court tournament and goes in one win away from his 1,100^th tour-level victory. Federer lifted the trophy in Halle in 2003-06, 2008, 2013-15 and is looking to win his 16^th grass-court title.

The 35-year-old Federer opens his campaign against Yen-Hsun Lu and could face Mischa Zverev in the second round; the German left-hander made the semi-finals in Stuttgart (l. to Lopez).

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Federer is projected to face sixth seed Lucas Pouille in the quarter-finals, though the sixth-seeded Frenchman faces a tricky opener against 6’5″ German Jan-Lennard Struff.

Also in Federer’s half of the draw is third seed Kei Nishikori, who is searching for his first grass-court trophy next week. The Japanese star faces Fernando Verdasco in the first round and is in the same quarter of the draw as Ivo Karlovic, a winner of three grass-court titles.

Dominic Thiem is the second seed. The Austrian is coming off his second straight Roland Garros semi-final (l. to Nadal) and will start his grass-court campaign against either Robin Haase or David Ferrer. The 23-year-old Thiem won his first ATP World Tour grass-court title last year in Stuttgart. He is in the same section of the draw as 39-year-old wild card Tommy Haas and fifth seed Gael Monfils.

#NextGenATP star Alexander Zverev rounds out the top four seeds. The home favourite, who lost today in the ‘s-Hertogebosch semi-finals (l. to Muller), is chasing his fifth ATP World Tour title and first on grass after finishing runner-up to Florian Mayer in the Halle final last year. The 20 year old will meet Paolo Lorenzi in the first round and could face 2011 champion Philipp Kohlschreiber in the second round.

Fourth seed Gilles Muller kept up his top form on Saturday in s’-Hertogenbosch, storming into another final at the Ricoh Open by upsetting second seed Alexander Zverev 7-6(5), 6-2.

“It was definitely one of my best matches this season. I played very well from the beginning. Everyone knows Sascha is a tough player and has already won some big tournaments, so I’m very happy to get through,” said Muller. “It’s true that I’m one of the older guys on tour, but I’m having my best time this year. I’ve been injury-free the past few years and able to play a full schedule, so that has helped me a lot.”

In a battle of veterans, Muller will contest the championship match against third seed Ivo Karlovic, who prevailed in a big-serving battle over top seed and fellow Croatian Marin Cilic 7-6(4), 5-7, 7-6(2). Karlovic moves into his 18th ATP World Tour singles final (8-9) and seventh on grass (3-3). 

“It was a great match. I was struggling this year, so it’s nice to make another final,” said Karlovic. “Hopefully the final against Gilles is a good match also.”

Muller and Karlovic are even in their FedEx ATP Head2Head at 1-1, with both matches coming last year on grass. Muller prevailed in their semi-final in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, but Karlovic turned the tables in the Newport final.

The 34-year-old Muller is through to his third ATP World Tour final of the season, winning his first title this January in Sydney (d. Evans) and finishing runner-up in Estoril (l. Carreno Busta). His success led to reaching a career-high Emirates ATP Ranking of No. 26 on 6 May.

Muller has continued to excel at this event. He was a runner-up last year (l. Mahut) and semi-finalist in 2015 (l. Goffin).

“I’ve played here many times,” said Muller. “I can travel here by car and my family is here, so it’s a really nice tournament for me.”

Karlovic evens his FedEx ATP Head2Head with Cilic at 3-3. The big-serving Croatian’s previous best result this year was a pair of quarter-finals in Doha and Budapest. The 38 year old is also just 14 aces shy of 12,000 after hitting 29 in his victory over Cilic.

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Muller and Zverev held serve throughout the first set to force a tie-break. Zverev grabbed an early mini-break, but the fourth seed went on a four-point run from 2/4 down. A strong serve on his second set point gave Muller the early advantage.

The Luxembourg native poured it on in the second set, firing a forehand passing shot to earn the first break of the match and lead 2-1. An aggressive forehand approach at 4-2 earned him a double break. Muller fired an ace on his first match point to wrap up the contest in one hour and 24 minutes. 

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Both Cilic and Karlovic held serve throughout the first set, but Cilic’s first double fault of the match gave Karlovic a 2/0 lead. The third seed rode that momentum to a one-set advantage. Cilic earned the first break of the match at 5-5 in the second set after a Karlovic volley floated long, and the top seed ultimately forced a decider.

Cilic bravely saved a match point at 5-6 in the final set with an overhead winner to force another tie-break. However, he hit a forehand error early on to give Karlovic a 2/0 lead. That lead was extended further after a forehand winner from Karlovic gave him a 5/1 advantage. The third seed hit a backhand volley winner on his first match point to prevail in two hours and 43 minutes. 

In the nuanced world of grass-court preparation, consistency is king. Like grass itself, it’s a mantra that Canadian agronomist Barry Britton lives and breathes by.

Achieving consistency of speed and bounce across the three match courts and three practice courts at the TC Weissenhof, home of the MercedesCup ATP World Tour 250 tennis tournament, is no easy feat. Enter Britton, his four-member court crew and a trusty yellow engineering tool, the Clegg hammer, a common engineering tool (often used in road construction and house foundations preparation) to measure the density of soil.

“The key thing is to match all the courts if you can,” Britton says. “We don’t want dead spots; we want uniformity. But we’re working with plants that are growing at different rates, have different root structures, a different bio mass and with different soils. You have to accept that you will get dead spots, but we try to eliminate them as much as possible. That’s the beauty of playing with a living surface.

“I know where the dead spots are. But I can’t let that out as players would play to those spots. But a smart player, the really professional ones, will pick up areas on the court where the ball reacts differently.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re a low-ranked qualifier or Roger Federer. If you’re practising in the 4pm-5pm hour, you better build in an extra few minutes to accommodate Britton and his yellow instrument of choice. On a typical day, Britton heads out to the practice courts at that time of day to begin poking and prodding the playing surface. By then, the courts have already been roughed up by players and endured the toughest heat of the day.

Only the match courts can breathe easy, but their turn will come later in the evening. “I can’t go on the match courts because if I make an indentation and a ball hits it, a player might blame the agronomist. So I wait till after the matches are done,” Britton says.

The data-collection process is relatively quick, taking just a few minutes. Britton tests six areas of the court, far fewer than the 30 each side he may test in the weeks leading up to the event, when the courts are divided into grids. Remedial action to improve consistency during a tournament is limited to rolling, irrigating (watering or applying covers to trap humidity) and fine mowing.

“Earlier this week I went out to Court 4 and Roger was practising,” Britton says. “I asked if I could come on the court and he said, ‘Absolutely’ and showed an interest in what we were doing. I said our goal was to get the courts consistent and uniform. He wished us good luck. And Viktor Troicki was very interested to know what we were doing. Most players are. They want to know what is going on.”

Britton has worked for the tournament since 2015, when it switched from clay to grass. He says that growing conditions this year were extreme. “They were the worst conditions I had seen to grow grass. March and April were so cold and wet that there was a lot of damage on the courts. It was everything we could do just to get grass on centre court.”

Ahead of the tournament, Britton works with the club’s court keeper, promoter and ATP officials to ensure that the courts are ready for prime time when the grass season begins. “We try to build these courts to Wimbledon standards and we use the three identical rye grasses used there. We’re learning that that may not be conducive to the winters we get here, where we get a lot of winter injury and damage. We’re restricted with the integrated pest management products we can use in Stuttgart.”

But come show time, Britton and his team will do everything in their power to deliver the best possible playing surface to kick off the grass season.