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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Austrian Dominic Thiem finally claimed his first Grand Slam title with a surprising comeback to beat Germany’s Alexander Zverev 2-6 4-6 6-4 6-3 7-6 (6) in a brutal and Chilling US Open Final on Sunday.
The 27-year-old world number three, defeated in his first three Grand Slam finals, started as a favorite but appeared to have squandered his golden opportunity by falling two sets behind.
Thiem, who had lost just one set en route to the final, seemed flustered with nerves from the start, but gradually broke the shackles to counter from a break and take third.
Zverev failed on serve at 3-4 in a high-quality fourth set that allowed Thiem to lead the match into a decider.
A limping Thiem trailed 5-3 in a tense decider, but Zverev couldn’t close it out and the Austrian called up some incredible base winners to lead him to a tiebreaker.
A heartbreaking climax saw Thiem blow two match points of 6-4 on forehand errors, but he was not denied and set up a third match point with a passing shot before Zverev fired wide after four hours and two minutes. .
“I wish there were two winners today, we both deserved it,” Thiem, the second Austrian to win a Grand Slam title after Thomas Muster’s 1995 French Open title, said on the court after a tearful speech from his opponent. 23-year-old opponent. .
Thiem had lost the last two French Open finals to Rafa Nadal and this year’s Australian Open final to Novak Djokovic.
This time he started as the favorite, but he needed to become the first player to win a Grand Slam title with two sets behind since Gaston Gaudio at the 2004 French Open to end his wait.
Thiem is the first male player born in the 1990s to claim a Grand Slam and the first, in addition to Nadal’s Big Three, Djokovic and Roger Federer, to claim one of the biggest since Stan Wawrinka won the 2016 US Open.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Edited by Shri Navaratnam)
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