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Tommy Paul is happy to be through to the Dallas Open semifinal butfunnily acknowledged that it's probably time for him to also figure out how to play better in non-indoors tournaments.
On Friday, the No. 3 seed beat fellow American Reilly Opelka in the quarterfinal of an indoor-hard tournament in Dallas.
Since the world No. 9 also won the tournament in his debut last year, he now owns a perfect 8-0 record at the event.
If Paul makes it all the way in Dallas this week, that will be his fifth ATP title but also the fourth one that came in an indoors-tournament - he has one Dallas title, two Stockholm titles (indoor-hard), and he also won the grass event in Queen's last year.
A quarter of your tour-level semifinals have come indoors. What does that say about your game? the interviewer asked the American.
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The 27-year-old funnily responded: "Thats crazy. I guess it means I need to get better at playing outside."
Paul on overcoming Opelka
Early in the match, the No. 3 seed missed out on a total of three break points across two separate games.
However, in the tie-break, he went on a big four-point winning run to open a 6-2 lead before converting his second set point to win the first set.
After sealing the opener, Paul broke Opelka in the fourth and eighth games of the second to complete a two-set win.
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"Getting his serve back in the court is pretty tough," Paul reflected.
"The ball was moving quick today. I feel like even quicker today than others. Maybe its just because I have Reilly serving to me. It was hard to control the ball for both of us, I think.
"We had a couple loose errors. In terms of the friendship stuff weve been doing it our whole lives. Ive played Reilly now at every level.
"Before today I hadnt played him on tour. We handle it pretty well.
For a place in the Dallas final, Paul plays against Denis Shapovalov.
