Félix Auger-Aliassime after a fall during his quarter-final match against Italy's Flavio Cobolli at the French Open in Paris on Wednesday.Aurelien Morissard/The Canadian Press
Félix Auger-Aliassime missed out on a golden opportunity to advance to his first Grand Slam title match after falling 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to Italy’s Flavio Cobolli in quarter-final action Wednesday.
The fourth seed from Montreal had a favourable path to the final after several highly seeded players fell to early upsets, including top-ranked Jannik Sinner.
But Auger-Aliassime once again met his match in the 10th-seeded Cobolli, who has won all three matchups between the players.
Auger-Aliassime looked to be in control after taking the first set and going up 3-1 in the second. But the Italian dominated the rest of the match.
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Cobolli out-aced Auger-Aliassime 8-7 – a rare result for the 6-foot-4 Canadian – and converted five of 10 break points.
Auger-Aliassime had 11 chances to break Cobolli, but was good on just three.
Cobolli will face Italian Matteo Arnaldi in his first Grand Slam semi-final.
Second-seeded Alexander Zverev of Germany and 26th-seeded Jakub Mensik will meet in the other semi-final.
Auger-Aliassime became the first Canadian to advance to the quarter-finals of all four Grand Slams at this year’s French Open. He had advanced to two semi-finals, both times at the U.S. Open, but has yet to appear in a major final.
Earlier, Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and American partner Evan King advanced to the mixed doubles final with a 7-5, 6-7 (6), 10-5 victory over Croatia’s Nikola Mektic and American Asia Muhammad.
The unseeded Dabrowski and King will face Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori in the final. The top-seeded Italians dispatched Germany’s Laura Siegemund and Edouard Roger-Vasselin of France in the other semi-final.
Dabrowski, from Ottawa, is also playing women’s doubles at the Grand Slam event with Brazil’s Luisa Stefani. The fourth seeds have reached the semi-finals in that draw and will next play the top-seeded duo of Czechia’s Katerina Siniakova and American Taylor Townsend on Friday.