Cameron Norrie out of Lyon Open at semi-final stage, suffers bagel in straight-set loss to Francisco Cerundolo

Cameron Norrie is out of the Lyon Open at the semi-final stage after suffering a comprehensive 6-3 6-0 defeat to Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo.

The world No. 14 has a strong record at the ATP 250 event, reaching the 2021 final before winning the title last year.

But his 13-match win streak in the competition was brought to an end by Cerundolo on Friday afternoon in just 1h12, as the Argentinean won 88 per cent of his points on his first serve and conceded just one break point in the entire match.

Cerundolo will play his first final of the season – the third of his career – against either world No. 112 Arthur Fils or world No. 52 Brandon Nakashima.

“Today I played by far my best tennis of the week,” Cerundolo said on-court afterwards.

“Cameron is a really tough player. He won here last year. He’s top 15. He was top 10. I played amazing and I’m super happy to be in the finals.

“I’ve been beating many good players this past year. It’s super important because it shows you can play against anyone.

“I’m really confident with my tennis and hopefully I can – with more matches like this – go higher in the rankings and win more tournaments, if I can.”

Norrie had one break point opportunity to get back into the set at 4-3, but Cerundolo held firm before breaking his opponent’s serve again on set point.

Norrie appeared to be struggling physically at the beginning of the second set, while momentum was entirely with Cerundolo.

The Briton’s unforced error count continued to rise and Cerundolo raced to take a double break lead.

Cerundolo completed the victory by bagelling his opponent, Norrie going wide off his forehand side to hand Cerundolo an emphatic victory.

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