The German Alexander Zverev, 3rd player in the world, qualified on Friday for the semi-finals of the Masters 1000 in Paris by dismissing the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas (11th in the world) 7-5, 6-4.
Finalist at Bercy in 2020, Zverev will face the Australian Alex De Minaur (10th) or the Dane Holger Rune (13th), winner of the tournament in 2022, to try to match this performance.
Conversely, with this defeat against a player he had beaten in the round of 16 in Paris in 2023, Tsitsipas says goodbye to his last chances of playing in the Turin Masters (November 10-17), which will bring together the eight best players of the season.
On center court, Zverev seemed to have done the hardest part in the first set when he made the first break of the game to lead 6-5, service to follow.
But the German wasted his first two set points, even offering Tsitsipas a break point. But the third set point, won on a winning serve, was the right one for Zverev (7-5).
In the second set, the 27-year-old Hamburg colossus needed five break points to finally manage to take Tsitsipas' throw-in in the third game.
Catchy but never threatening on Zverev's service games, Tsitsipas failed to catch up and conceded the second set 6-4, a defeat synonymous with the probable end of the season for the Greek, semi-finalist in Paris in 2022 and 2023.
“At the start of the match he played incredible tennis, he had many more opportunities than me” to take the advantage, said Alexander Zverev just after his victory, the sixth against Tsitipas in sixteen confrontations.
“But I ended up finding my rhythm, especially from the baseline and I knew how to exploit the opportunities when they presented themselves,” he said.
“I have the feeling that I have not played well in recent weeks, I was losing quickly,” he added to the press as he left the court. “It perhaps gave me a little more freshness for the end of the season,” Zverev analyzed.
Stefanos Tsitsipas, for his part, felt that his service had been “bad” on Friday, while Zverev's was “excellent”. “On this type of surface, it makes a big difference,” he continued.
“I was a little surprised because I rely a lot on my serve, it's one of my best weapons. When it's absent, it weighs you down, you have to work three times as hard to earn a point”, commented the Greek.
dga/bdu
