Otto Virtanen returns to the scene of his best week. The Finn won the ATP Challenger 125 in Birmingham last year, and twelve months on he is back in the semifinals, the field around him stripped almost bare. With Roland Garros holding the sport's attention, the grass season has slipped into gear here, and only one of the eight seeds has survived to the last four: Kamil Majchrzak, the No. 2 seed at No. 78. None of the four men left is ranked inside the top 75. Virtanen meets Majchrzak in one semifinal on Saturday, while home favourite Arthur Fery faces China's Bu Yunchaokete in the other.
Virtanen, the defending champion, returns to the semifinals against lone seed Majchrzak
Virtanen has reached the last four on the lightest workload in the draw: two matches and four sets. He beat Zhizhen Zhang 7-6(8) 6-1 in the second round, saving all ten break points he faced, then advanced when Aleksandar Vukic withdrew with a knee injury, and closed his quarterfinal against Filippo Romano 6-4 6-4. Counting last year's title run, he arrives on an eight-match winning streak at the tournament. That run home matters more than usual for him: a Grade 2 tear of his left knee ligament, suffered when he slipped during a match in 's-Hertogenbosch last year, cost him two months out. His Birmingham title was built on the kind of serving that holds up on grass, with a quarterfinal won without facing a break point and 23 aces in the semifinal. Across the net is the draw's last seed. Majchrzak has not dropped a set, ending sixth seed Sho Shimabukuro 7-6(6) 6-3 in the quarterfinals without a double fault in either of his last two matches. The Pole has his own grass story to protect: a fourth round at Wimbledon last year, a result that stood apart from a main-tour record of just two singles wins before it, at Newport in 2019 and 's-Hertogenbosch in 2022. He defends those Wimbledon points in a month.
Fery's home run sets up a meeting with grass outsider Bu
Arthur Fery has given the home crowd its semifinalist, and he has earned it. The Briton, ranked 154, beat Tristan Schoolkate, then Alex Bolt, and then fifth seed Rinky Hijikata 7-6(7) 6-3. The Bolt win carried extra weight: the Australian had just removed top seed Mattia Bellucci 6-3 6-0, a former Wimbledon qualifier who took Ben Shelton to five sets in 2024 but arrived in Birmingham with only four wins in his last ten matches. Fery's serve never cracked against Bolt, holding all sixteen of his service games and striking fifteen aces, heavy numbers from a player who averages closer to four a match this season. Against Hijikata he edged a tight opening tiebreak 9-7 before pulling away. His opponent is Bu Yunchaokete, the No. 166 whose grass history barely exists, with two main-tour matches on the surface and no wins, yet who has moved through without fuss. Bu saw off Lloyd Harris, Billy Harris, and then Mark Lajal, the alternate who had ousted eighth seed Leandro Riedi, 7-5 6-4, holding all eleven of his service games behind 85 percent of first-serve points won. Both men arrive with losing tiebreak records this season, Fery at 3-7 and Bu at 4-8, a quirk worth watching on a surface where breakers so often decide.
