Nineteen-year-old Mirra Andreeva reaches her first grand slam final at the French Open where she will take on Poland’s Maja Chwali\u0144ska, the first qualifier to reach the Paris decider in the Open Era.<\/p>\n
“It’s amazing the way he [Men\u0161\u00edk] played these last two weeks. He beat so many unbelievable players.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He started playing amazing in the third set, stepping up his \u200clevel, but this is a [major] with best-of-five-set matches.<\/p>\n
“Things happen and your opponents will play better. You have to deal with it. I hope to play another great \u2060match on Sunday.”<\/p>\n
Zverev will approach the showdown against his close friend Cobolli with caution.<\/p>\n
He lost to Cobolli in \u200cthe Munich semifinals in April.<\/p>\n
When Zverev and Cobolli squared off again in Madrid last month, it was the German who prevailed to lead their head-to-head record 3-1.<\/p>\n
“I look forward to playing him in the final,” Zverev said.<\/p>\n
“Of course, it’s his first final, I’m happy for him that he reached it. But the only thing I can control is that I play good tennis. I will try to show my level.”<\/p>\n
Zverev on top early<\/p>\n
A tight opening set on a sun-kissed Court Philippe Chatrier tilted Zverev’s way when he struck a backhand crosscourt winner in \u200cthe 11th game on his way to breaking Men\u0161\u00edk’s serve.<\/p>\n
The world number three sent down a powerful ace to pocket the first set and asserted himself with an early break at the start of the second set, as his 20-year-old Czech opponent’s level \u2060briefly dipped in his first major semifinal.<\/p>\n
![\"Jakub](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/66f61045b98a366fd97b70c6d4d6563d.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Jakub Men\u0161\u00edk (left) congratulates Alexander Zverev following their semifinal.<\/p>\n
Men\u0161\u00edk sat with a towel over his head \u200cduring a changeover and his troubles deepened after the \u200crestart, when Zverev took his game up a few notches and sealed a double break, before comfortably doubling his lead in the match.<\/p>\n
After a long medical timeout for a neck issue, \u200c Men\u0161\u00edk mixed his booming serve with deft drop shots to break for a 4-2 lead on his way to winning the third set.<\/p>\n
But Zverev powered through the next set to seal victory.<\/p>\n
“Today’s match had a lot of stories,” Men\u0161\u00edk said.<\/p>\n
“Of course, Sascha [Zverev] is a very tough \u200cguy on the court. He’s not giving you any \u2060free points.<\/p>\n
“It’s very tough to find the rhythm, especially when he’s staying so far back, and you feel like you’re hitting a wall.<\/p>\n
“It was difficult to get into my zone. I had my game plan \u2026 it was super tough to choose the right shots. There were good moments and, of course, worse moments in that match.”<\/p>\n
Ill Arnaldi withdraws<\/p>\n
As the dust settled on the absorbing semifinal, French Open organisers confirmed Cobolli had advanced to the tournament decider after Arnaldi withdrew with a virus.<\/p>\n
“It’s not what I wanted to do,” Arnaldi said.<\/p>\n
“Last night I started to feel unwell and then at dinner I started to feel so-so in my stomach and I \u200cwoke up at 1am and \u200cstarted vomiting.<\/p>\n
“It made no sense to play out of respect for him. It wouldn’t have been a good match.”<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/8b4f2912f4510bff85423048f7e39d35.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Matteo Arnaldi says he had no choice but to withdraw. (Getty Images: Clive Brunskill)<\/p>\n
Cobolli said Arnaldi’s withdrawal left him emotional.<\/p>\n
“It was tough,” Cobolli said.<\/p>\n
“When he came to me with the news, I almost cried. I have a lot of respect for him and he’s an inspiration for a lot of us.”<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev has moved to within touching distance of a long-coveted major title after beating Jakub Men\u0161\u00edk to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5244,64,63,2649,105414,348154,96073,140960,24143,25906,85,747],"class_list":["post-717791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-alexander-zverev","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-final","tag-flavio-cobolli","tag-frenmch-open","tag-jakub-mensik","tag-matteo-arnaldi","tag-roland-garros","tag-semifinal","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}