MANILA—No. 2 seeds Francis Casey Alcantara of the Philippines and Kelsey Stevenson of Canada are through to the doubles semifinals of the M15 Sharm El Sheikh tournament in Egypt.

The M15 Sharm El Sheikh is a Futures tournament on the International Tennis Federation (ITF) men’s world tennis tour.

Following their 6-2, 6-1 win over Italians Marco Miceli and Roberto Miceli in the 1st round, Alcantara and Stevenson ousted Cesar Bourgois of France and Loic Cloes of Belgium, 6-4, 6-4, in the quarterfinals on Thursday.

Bourgois and Cloes broke away with a 2-0 lead in the opening set, and Alcantara and Stevenson caught up quickly to level at 2-2.

At 3-3, the French-Belgian tandem served 2 double faults, the second of which allowed the Filipino-Canadian team to break serve and advance to 4-3.

Both teams held serve in the next 2 games, leading Alcantara and Stevenson to serve for the set at 5-3. They won a love service game to take the 1st set, 6-4.

The Filipino and Canadian netters wasted no time in the 2nd set, taking a 3-0 edge then maintaining their lead at 4-2.

The teams continued to hold serve until the end, with Alcantara and Stevenson clinching the match 6-4 and notching a semis berth.

In the semifinals on Friday, Alcantara and Stevenson will face Wei-De Lin and Bang Shuo Yin of Chinese-Taipei, who received a walkover in their match against Jiri Barnat and Jan Satral of Czech Republic.

Alcantara, 30, is the first Filipino grand slam champion, after he and Cheng-Peng Hsieh of Chinese Taipei bagged the Australian Open junior boys’ doubles title in 2009.

The 2019 Southeast Asian Games doubles gold medalist, who partnered with Jeson Patrombon, is the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Doubles No. 655 with a career high of No. 257 in 2018.

Among his doubles titles in 2021 are the ITF M25 Calabasas with Filipino-American Raymond Sarmiento and the ITF M25 Harlingen with Mark Whitehouse of Great Britain.

He also won several singles titles last year, including the United States Tennis Association (USTA) San Francisco Labor Day Open Tournament.

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