A week ago, Francis Casey Alcantara and Indonesian partner Christopher Rungkat fell to third seeds Benjamin Lock of Zimbabwe and Yuta Shimizu of Japan in the finals of the ATP Challenger Bangkok Open 2.
This time around, Alcantara and Rungkat made sure they exacted some measure of vengeance.
After heavy rains washed out the action the past two days in the ATP Challenger Bangkok Open 3, Alcantara and Rungkat took the court twice on Friday to get back at their previous week’s tormentors.
The unseeded Southeast Asian pair pulled off a massive upset in the morning as they defeated top seeds Lock and his younger brother Courtney John Lock, 4-6, 6-3, 10-5 in the quarterfinals.
Alcantara and Rungkat relied on their quickness and accurate groundstrokes to outsteady the towering Lock siblings. The 6-foot-6 Benjamin and 6-foot-4 Courtney lorded it over the net at some stretches of the match, but Alcantara and Rungkat held their own and then some to eke out a victory in their exciting three-set thriller.
Alcantara and Rungkat came back late in the afternoon to take down fourth seeds Shimizu and Australia’s Anirudh Chandrasekar, 6-1, 6-4, in the semifinals held at the Rama Gardens Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand.
Last week’s runner-up honors tied Alcantara’s best-ever finish in an ATP Challenger event. His previous second place finish happened in 2016 in the ATP Manila Challenger where his partner was also Rungkat.
Alcantara will be gunning for his first ever ATP Challenger championship on Saturday. He and Rungkat will face the winner of the other semifinal match scheduled on Friday night pitting 3rd seeds Toshihide Matsui and Kaito Uesegi of Japan against Yunseong Chung of South Korea and Ajeet Rai of Australia.
