Monte Carlo – Germany’s best tennis player Alexander Zverev has reached the quarter-finals at the ATP tournament in Monte Carlo.
Despite being down by a break in both sets, the 24-year-old Olympic champion was a commanding 6-2, 7-5 winner over Spain’s Pablo Carreño Busta. At 5:4 in the second set, Zverev missed two chances on Carreño Busta’s serve to decide the round of 16 for himself. He then took his fourth match point at 6-5 with a net attack.
“I am satisfied. It was a relatively high level for the second clay court match of the season. I’m happy to be through in two sets,” Zverev said on Sky. He had lost concentration in the second set at the beginning, he said earlier in the on-court interview. In the match for the semi-finals of the Masters 1000 clay-court tournament, which is worth around 5.2 million euros, the German top player will now face Jannik Sinner from South Tyrol. The world number 12 won against Russian pro Andrei Rublyov 5:7, 6:1, 6:3.
Against world No. 19 Carreño Busta, Zverev lost his first service game 0:1 in both sets, but made up the deficit in each case. With four game winners in a row, the world number three laid the foundation for winning the first set. In the second set, the Hamburg player evened the score at 3-3.
In his opening match in his adopted country, Zverev had beaten the Argentine Federico Delbonis 6:1, 7:5 and had a walk-through in the first round as the number two seed. Because the Serbian world number one Novak Djokovic surprisingly dropped out early, Zverev is the highest-ranked player in the field. He is hoping to reach his second final this year in Monte Carlo.