Alexander Zverev said it felt “very special” to become just the fifth player to reach the semi-finals of all nine ATP Masters 1,000 tournaments and join elite company after he booked his place in the last four at Indian Wells.<\/p>\n
The German claimed a confident 6-2 6-3 victory over Frenchman Arthur Fils to reach the last four of the California-based tournament for the first time.<\/p>\n
By completing the set of Masters 1,000 semi-final appearances, Zverev joins a club featuring only the ‘Big Four’ of the men’s game – Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.<\/p>\n
“It’s very special to be one of five players in history to ever do it,” Zverev said.<\/p>\n
“For sure, yeah, it’s something that I’m very proud of.”<\/p>\n
Zverev has taken the title at five of the nine Masters 1,000 events, but he has never won a Grand Slam title despite reaching three major finals.<\/p>\n
The fourth seed will have to snap a five-match losing streak against world number two Jannik Sinner if he is to move one step closer to the Indian Wells trophy.<\/p>\n
Sinner, the reigning Wimbledon champion, sealed his own spot in the semi-finals with a rapid 66-minute 6-1 6-2 win against American Learner Tien.<\/p>\n
The world number two, who is trying to become champion at Indian Wells for the first time, is also bidding for his first title of 2026 after a semi-final exit at the Australian Open and a quarter-final defeat in last month’s Qatar Open.<\/p>\n
World number one Carlos Alcaraz will face Daniil Medvedev in the other men’s semi-final, after both players overcame British opponents.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz defeated Cameron Norrie 6-3 6-4 in their quarter-final, while Medvedev ended British number one Jack Draper’s title defence with a 6-1 7-5 victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev said it felt “very special” to become just the fifth player to reach the semi-finals of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-533361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}