NEW YORK, Sept \u20605 (Reuters) – Top seed Alexander Zverev lost his way in the second set but \u2060got his game back under control to secure a 6-2 7-6(2) 6-2 victory \u200cover Alejandro Tabilo and reach the fourth round of the U.S. Open on Saturday.<\/p>\n
After spending a gruelling nine hours and 26 minutes on court across back-to-back five-setters against Lorenzo Sonego and Quentin Halys, the last \u200bthing the German would have wanted was another long night \u2060on Arthur Ashe Stadium.<\/p>\n
“My coach was \u2060quite smart, he said that best-of-five sets doesn’t mean that you have to play \u2060five \u200csets. I didn’t know it until now, that was quite helpful,” Zverev joked later.<\/p>\n
“I’m happy with my level right now, it’s going in the right direction and \u2060I’m happy to be in the second week.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t \u200bpractice much yesterday, only an \u200chour, which is very little for me. I’d spent almost 10 hours on \u2060court, so I \u200bhad to find my rhythm somehow. I still think I can play better, but for now I’m happy with how things are going.”<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old, who won his first Grand Slam title at \u2060the French Open and finished runner-up at Wimbledon, stormed \u200bout of the blocks by breaking 25th seed Tabilo twice before taking the first set with an unreturnable serve to love.<\/p>\n
Zverev raced to a 4-2 lead in the second set but \u2060his level suddenly dropped, allowing world number 28 Tabilo to claim three games in a row and go within touching distance of drawing level in the match.<\/p>\n
However, the Chilean was unable to press home the advantage and Zverev, after chiding a courtside fan who \u200bappeared to be offering coaching advice during the ensuing tiebreak, \u2060rediscovered his composure and his best tennis, pulling away to tighten his grip on the \u200bmatch.<\/p>\n
The writing was on the wall for Tabilo when \u200cZverev raced ahead 5-2 in the third, and \u200bthe German booked his place in the round of 16 where 21st-seeded Italian Luciano Darderi awaits.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in New York; Editing by Peter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept \u20605 (Reuters) – Top seed Alexander Zverev lost his way in the second set but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,6675,85,747],"class_list":["post-881780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-na","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881780","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=881780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}