LONDON (AP) \u2014 Alexander Zverev is used to being \u201cthe third guy\u201d in tennis. <\/p>\n
After following up his French Open title with a run to his first Wimbledon final, he’s hoping to be more than that in the future. <\/p>\n
Despite losing to Jannik Sinner on Centre Court on Sunday, the 29-year-old Zverev thinks he is closer than ever to challenging the top-ranked Italian and his main rival Carlos Alcaraz and giving tennis a Big Three again. <\/p>\n
Sinner and Alcaraz had won the last nine Grand Slam tournaments between them before Zverev won his first major at Roland Garros this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was always this conversation, \u2018who will be the third guy?\u2019\u201d Zverev said. \u201cI\u2019ve always been the third guy, but I was just far away from those two. But I\u2019ve always been No. 3 in a way. So if I get closer to them … it would be great.\u201d <\/p>\n
Alcaraz missed this year’s French Open \u2014 and Wimbledon \u2014 with a wrist injury, and Sinner was eliminated in the second round in Paris after wilting in the heat. Zverev lost in five sets to Alcaraz in the semifinals at the Australian Open this year and lost 6-7 (7), 7-6 (2), 6-3, 6-4 to Sinner on Sunday after overextending his knee in the third set. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve been pushing those guys,\u201d Zverev said. \u201cI haven\u2019t beaten them this year, but I\u2019ve pushed them to the limits, I would say.\u201d <\/p>\n
He may have been able to push Sinner even more had it not been for a slip during the third set, on Zverev’s only break point of the match. The German fell to the ground and clutched his right knee in pain, with Sinner coming over to check on his opponent before helping Zverev up off the grass.<\/p>\n
Zverev said he overextended his knee and that it hampered his serve \u2014 his biggest weapon \u2014 after that. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was struggling to push off on the serve a little bit. So my serve speed went down,\u201d he said. \u201cBut everything else went fine. I was moving fine from the baseline and playing from the baseline fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the loss, Zverev will shed the \u201cthird guy\u201d moniker in at least one way \u2014 he will overtake Alcaraz as No. 2 in the rankings on Monday. <\/p>\n
Zverev had never been past the fourth round at Wimbledon before this year, but seems to have finally figured out how to play on grass. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 29 years old and this is the first time I actually believe I can win this trophy,\u201d Zverev told the Centre Court crowd after his defeat.<\/p>\n
Sinner seems to share that belief. <\/p>\n
\u201cToday you were so, so close. If you play like this, I’m very, very sure you’re going to have this (trophy) at home as well,” Sinner told his opponent. “I know the goal is for you to become the No. 1 in the world. You’re very, very close. So we have to be very careful now.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/p>\n
Mattias Kar\u00e9n, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 Alexander Zverev is used to being \u201cthe third guy\u201d in tennis. After following up his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-798468","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\/798468","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=798468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}