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Alexander Zverev is in the final of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time. On his way to the US Open final, where he will play on Sunday (10pm CEST, live on Eurosport and on our live ticker) Dominic Thiem complies, the German has shown new qualities.
by Jörg Allmeroth
Last edit: September 12, 2020, 12:37 pm
© Getty Images
It was not just a delay. It was a humiliation, a disaster, a sports declaration of bankruptcy. Alexander Zverev was 3: 6 and 0: 5 behind in the US Open semifinals against Spaniard Pablo Carreño Busta, he was just a shadow of himself, and that too was an understatement. A little later Zverev also lost the second sentence, Boris Becker, the old master, spoke from a distance of a “very questionable appearance” on the part of the young German. And on the Internet, malice and ridicule were already spilling over the reeling giant.
Those who took Zverev’s night shift after the initial fiasco were able to rub their eyes even more on Saturday than those who followed the match to the last and final rally. Because the final turning point was set by the despised, ridiculed, discarded Zverev: after three hours and 21 minutes, it was 1:40 am home in Germany, the 23-year-old did the seemingly impossible to perfection and won 3rd place. . : 6, 2: 6, 6: 3, 6: 4, 6: 3 success, the first Grand Slam final of his checkered career.
Zverevs Showdown mit Thiem
The dead live longer: On Sunday night (10pm, Eurosport), Zverev will meet his old friend and partner Dominic Thiem (27) in the final showdown, who beat Russian Daniil Medvedev 6: 2, 7: 6 and 7 by all means. : He had sent 6. “I can hardly wait for it to start,” Zverev said after his miraculous resurrection in the Big Apple. After a triggering act by Houdini that was lackluster, but which was morally more valuable. The supervisor of German tennis, Chancellor Becker, later called him a “monster of the mind” with a hint of reverence.
One thing is certain: with his appearance at the Grand Slam, with the final breakthrough as the first German since Michael Stich in 1994 (loss to Andre Agassi), Zverev has earned more respect than ever from his beloved teammates and coaching staff. . Like a man who suddenly bounced back and forth from deep reds, put doubts, frustrations, and noises aside, and yet crossed the finish line first. Zverev has always had the talent and potential to play amazing tennis. He’s a great talent, but part of his career was also about missing great opportunities. Losing games should or had to win.
Zverev turns to another game
The match against Carreño Busta, the Spanish underdog, could also have been included in this classification, such as Zverev’s failure at the decisive moment. But as before against Frenchman Mannarino and Croatian Coric, the world number seven turned the game around, with a historically particularly valuable star rating: For the first time, the two-meter slap even caught up after a 0: 2 deficit on the set. successfully. “I said to myself: you can’t finish a semifinal here like this,” Zverev said. Then at the beginning of act three, after a brief pause to reflect while going to the bathroom, he did something that sounds simple but not easy. He always focused only on the next point, the next game, and not on the big, dark picture. At some point, with this strategy of small steps, he also reached the fifth set, according to Zverev, “and then I did relatively well.”
Grand Slam tennis is, at best, a stage for aesthetes. But as contemporary witness Roger Federer once commented: “You don’t win well. But to win. Does not matter how. “Zverev even had to do more during this US Open, not only did he have to win, he had to wake up again and again in critical life situations, to find himself in the spooky atmosphere of this tournament of silence. He might have given in to temptation often enough to let go of a game after all, against Coric he was 1: 6 and 2: 4 behind after all.
General equilibrium speaks for Thiem
But Zverev always remained calm, perhaps also with the certainty that as a now more mature and adult player, he could still find a solution to the misery. His victories in New York were, in a way, victories over his old self, over the neglect of enormous talent, over the neglect of the gifted. Zverev didn’t lose his temper either, as he used to do when he got angry at Carreño Busta: the Spaniard shot him twice very unattractive and unnecessary in the body, but the burger got cold in the end. “Sascha gave him the answer on the field,” Becker said.
After Corona, New York is now also before Corona. Because in the final, Zverev meets a familiar figure in the first German-Austrian final date, Spezi Thiem. He had locked him out in the title match in Australia in January, for Zverev it was the fourth Grand Slam-level loss against the massive fighter. Zverev would have liked to avoid the duel, not surprising with the overall balance of 2: 7 in the meetings with Thiem. But none of this US Open has been a request for Zverev so far. The best thing for him is that he is still there after all the sporting turbulence, like an unpredictable standing man. Everything starts over on Sunday. What was before does not matter. Thiem also knows that, for the previous victories against Zverev, “I couldn’t buy anything,” he says, “it will be very difficult against Sascha.”
Here’s the singles draw at the Men’s US Open
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