June 20 (Reuters) \u2013 French Open champion Alexander Zverev\u2019s run at the Halle Open was cut short after he was beaten 6-7(4) 6-4 7-5 by \u200bTaylor Fritz in the semi-finals on Saturday, while \u200cFrances Tiafoe cruised past Daniel Altmaier to set up an all-American final.<\/p>\n
The third-ranked German, a finalist at Halle in 2016 and 2017, entered the match with a poor recent record against Fritz, \u200chaving \u200blost his previous six meetings \u2060with the American.<\/p>\n
He made \u2060a strong start, securing an early break, but Fritz responded to force a tiebreak, which Zverev won.<\/p>\n
Fritz hit back in the second set, turning the momentum decisively \u200bin his favour by winning 12 consecutive points and levelling the match. In the decider, both players \u2060were locked in a tense \u2060battle before Fritz produced a late break \u200bto seal victory and book his place in the final.<\/p>\n
The \u200b28-year-old struck 19 aces and won 87% of \u200chis first-serve points to snap Zverev\u2019s 10-match winning streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I played a good tiebreak (in the first set) and I felt I got a little unlucky \u2060with some bounce and he played some really good points and took one on my serve and that was it,\u201d Fritz \u2060said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt \u200clike he was struggling with something. I \u2060am not sure what it was. I \u200bfelt \u200clike I felt better than he did \u200bso that \u2060was what I needed to tell myself to go to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tiafoe dispatched Germany\u2019s Altmaier with ease, breezing through the opening set before sealing a 6-1 6-3 victory.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Karan Prashant Saxena in Bengaluru, editing by Ed Osmond \u200band Pritha Sarkar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 20 (Reuters) \u2013 French Open champion Alexander Zverev\u2019s run at the Halle Open was cut short after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-750994","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\/750994","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=750994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}