Four hours, 33 minutes, and a 2:15am handshake
Alexander Zverev pulled his shirt off the moment the last ball landed. It was 2:15 in the morning in New York and he had just spent four hours and 33 minutes doing something he clearly did not enjoy.
The top seed beat Quentin Halys 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-7(3), 6-3 overnight to reach the third round of the US Open. It was his second five-setter in three days. The opener against Lorenzo Sonego lasted four hours and 53 minutes and also finished at 2:15am. Nobody in the men’s draw has spent more time on court this week.
“I won, and that’s the most important thing,” Zverev said in his on-court interview, after an assessment of his own tennis that the broadcast had to bleep. “I’ve been here for another four and a half hours. 2:15am again.”
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The serve did the work his groundstrokes would not
Zverev hammered 29 aces. He also created 20 break points and converted only five, which is the whole story of why a match this uneven on paper ran the distance. From the baseline he was loose, spraying forehands at exactly the moments Halys was there to be put away.
The Frenchman had the third set at 4-1 and held a break point for 5-1. Zverev clawed his way back into it and took the tie-break 7-3, a single set that swallowed 75 minutes. Halys answered with the fourth in another tie-break, then ran out of legs. The fifth belonged to the fitter man.
“That’s what I go to the gym for,” Zverev said. “That’s what I go to the track for and train for, to be able to come out on top of these difficult moments when you’re not playing best, when you’re not hitting winners left and right, just getting through these kinds of matches.”
Tabilo next, and a first as top seed
Zverev is 29, ranked No. 2, and seeded first at a major for the first time in his career. He won Roland Garros this year. His only previous final at Flushing Meadows was in 2020, when he led Dominic Thiem by two sets and lost.
Next comes Alejandro Tabilo, the 25th seed, who lost to Zverev in the first round here twelve months ago and trails their head-to-head 2-0. The German will want that one in three sets.
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