Second seeds Francis Casey Alcantara of the Philippines and Christopher Rungkat of Indonesia continued their impressive campaign as they marched into semifinals of the 2016 ITF (International Tennis Federation) Hong Kong Futures 2 doubles event being held at the Victoria Park Tennis Courts.

Alcantara and Rungkat posted a convincing 6-1, 6-1 win over un­seeded Russians Aleksandr Malyshev and Maksim Malyshev in the quarterfinals of the tournament, which offers a total prize fund of $10,000.

A fitting follow up to their 7-5, 6-3 demolition of Taiwanese pair Hung Jui-Chen and Wang Chieh-Fu in the first round.

“That was quick. We’re not actually expecting it to be that fast. It’s a great win for us going into the semifinals,” said the 24-year-old Alcan­tara, owner of the 2009 Australian Open juniors doubles title with former partner Hsieh Cheng-Pang of Taiwan.

Alcantara and Rungkat will be facing Markus Kerner of Estonia and Mikelis Libietis of Latvia, who scored an equally impressive 6-3, 6-3 win over Japanese Shintaro Imai and Arata Onozawa in the other quarterfinal pairing.

The semifinal matches were scheduled on Thursday night.

It was Alcantara and Rung­kat’s fourth semifinal appearance as partners.

They reached the same stage in the Uzbekistan Futures 4 in May, India Futures 2 also in May and Manila Challenger in January.

Source: www.manilatimes.net