Enlarge image
Alexander Zverev
Photo: Julian Finney / Getty Images
As at the Olympics, Alexander Zverev won against Novak Djoković and was able to finish his season with a title in the last tennis game of the year.
With the 7: 6 (7: 4), 4: 6, 6: 3, Zverev made it into the final at the ATP season finale in Turin on Saturday evening.
Thanks to his best performance in this tournament in a high-class match, the 24-year-old repeated his coup from the summer games in Tokyo, where he also triumphed in the round of the top four against the world number one.
Zverev will play the final on Sunday (5 p.m., TV: Sky) against the Russian defending champion Daniil Medvedev, who won 6: 4, 6: 2 against the Norwegian outsider Casper Ruud. Zverev had just lost to the US Open winner in the preliminary round in the tie-break of the third set and received his fifth loss to Medvedev in a row. Three years ago, Zverev won the title in the final against Djoković at the ATP Finals - back then in London.
At the Turin premiere of the event, Zverev showed a remarkable performance against Djoković in front of 7,000 spectators - due to the corona pandemic, capacity was limited.
Germany's best tennis player could once again rely on his serve, which often led to points winning even against the excellent return player Djoković.
"There will be a lot of longer rallies, we will run more, we will suffer more," said Zverev, which was right compared to the preliminary round against Poland's Hubert Hurkacz.
Zverev shows strong nerves in the decision sentence
In his view, that was the case especially at 4: 5: Zverev had problems with his own serve for the first time and had to fend off a set ball from the top favorite.
But the Olympic champion also did well in the longer rallies against Djoković.
Although he could not use his only two break opportunities in the following service game of the Serb;
the consequence was the tiebreak in sentence one.
But Zverev earned this with a courageous game.
He denied the second set with Djoković at eye level.
But at 4: 5, Zverev gave up his serve for the first time.
He then fought four set balls successfully, with the fifth he was powerless.
In the third set, however, the Hamburg resident already won the game to make it 3-1 when Djoković served and never let the opponent come back.
cev / dpa
