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French double up in star-strangled Rotterdam Open

Gilles Simon and Michael Llodra pulled off a French double at the seed-stripped Rotterdam Open on Friday to reach the semi-finals.

Simon won his eighth match of the season, a week after defeating Australian Open winner Novak Djokovic in Marseille, by producing a 6-3, 6-2 defeat of Russian world No. 132 Teimuraz Gabashvili.

In yesterday's semi-finals, he was to play Sweden's Robin Soderling, who ended the run of Andreas Seppi 6-3, 6-2, a day after the Italian had beaten world No. 2 and top seed Rafael Nadal.

Llodra, meanwhile, ended home interest at the Ahoy stadium with a 7-6 (7/5), 7-6 (7/5) quarter-final win over Robin Haase.

Llodra, a doubles specialist who took the Wimbledon title last summer alongside Arnaud Clement, will face Croatian giant Ivo Karlovic in the semi-finals.

He has defeated Karlovic twice, at Zagreb early last year and in 2003 at Paris Bercy.

Before Llodra had sent the last Dutchman packing, this event was already labouring after becoming the first since 2006 to lose all eight seeds before the quarter-final stage.

Nadal and Nikolay Davydenko went out in the second round, with Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Murray exiting in the first.

French players have a head start in the trophy chase, with Cedric Pioline winning the title here in 2000, followed by Nicolas Escude in 2001 and 2002.

Karlovic, who stands at 2.08m, fired more than a dozen aces as he reached the final four for the first time this season, defeating German qualifier Mischa Zverev 6-3, 6-1.

Karlovic won all three of his career titles in a breakthrough last year, but was playing a quarter-final for the first time this year.

"I'm the highest-ranked player still in the draw, but I don't want to consider myself the favorite," the world No. 24 from Zagreb said. "That would put too much pressure on me. Everyone has good chances now, I just want to keep playing well."

Llodra produced 13 aces against Haase as the Dutch 20-year-old became the Frenchman's 12th victim this season.
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