All of a sudden, there are only four left

The semis are here. While one of them was somehow predictable, taking into account the top seeds list, the other definitely surprised us all.

First things first: Stefanos Tsitsipas will be facing David Goffin, replicating their meeting in Marseille's semis, last February. The first seed greek is 3-2 ahead in their head-to-head and won the last match between the two, despite losing the only one in clay courts. When it comes to Goffin, these are his second semis this year, and the first in clay courts since Barcelona, a year ago. 

While in the first semifinal of today's schedule the top seeds have confirmed their favouritism, the other is totally unexpected: Alejandro Davidovich Fokina had come to Clube de Ténis do Estoril to play the qualifying, without any win in ATP main draws (and only one match played), and here he is now making history in the professional tour, after winning 2017 Wimbledon's junior championship. In his turn, Pablo Cuevas had fallen in qualifying's last round, but somehow got lucky (loser), held onto his opportunity and made it to a 21st semifinal (third this year) of a successful career with six ATP titles - all of them in clay courts.

With this line up, two things are unavoidable: we'll have a fifth different champion out of five Millennium Estoril Open editions and also two first-time finalists.