Julien Benneteau and Arnaud Clement look set to reach Sunday’s final.

The Masters is an eight player, all-French exhibition event which takes place indoors in Toulouse. It features some of the best French players but Gilles Simon and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga are not competing this year.

It is a round-robin format with the winners of the two groups meeting in Sunday’s final. Benneteau and Clement look set to face off with both players having won each of their matches so far.

The experienced Benneteau was fortunate to win his first match, defeating David Guez 6-2, 2-6, 12-10, saving several match points in the champions tiebreak. Michael Llodra was the favourite to win the group but Benneteau put in a classy performance on Friday to beat him 6-2, 7-6.

The big surprise of the week has been the performance of Paul-Henri Mathieu who has suffered heavy straight sets defeats to Llodra and Guez.

Like Benneteau, Clement was also very fortunate in his first match. He was being completely outplayed by Jeremy Chardy before Chardy had to retire with a painful back after winning the first set 6-2. Chardy said afterwards that it was merely a precaution as he wants to be fit for his first event of the season in Brisbane.

Clement had to fight all the way to secure his second win against the big serving Marc Gicquel. It went down to the wire before Clement won 4-6, 6-3, 11-9.