Carlos Alcaraz won his opening match at the Vienna Open on Tuesday with a straight-sets victory over Karen Khachanov, while Alexander Zverev survived four match points to beat Martin Landaluce in a marathon encounter.<\/p>\n
World number three Alcaraz<\/a> saw off the former eighth-ranked Russian 6-4, 7-6 (7\/5)<\/a> in their first-round meeting.<\/p>\n The seven-time Grand Slam champion decided to add the 500-level event in the Austrian capital to his schedule at short notice, having not competed in it since 2021.<\/p>\n Sidelined from mid-April to the end of August due to a wrist injury, Alcaraz has produced mixed results since his return, including a third-round exit at the Shanghai Masters in his last tournament at the start of October.<\/p>\n “I really enjoyed it, even though I had to run, had to fight, had to sweat a lot. We both played great shots, great points. I would say it was a great match to watch and I’m really happy about it,” Alcaraz said.<\/p>\n Alcaraz had to dig deep against the 30-year-old power-hitter, recovering from a break down to take the first set.<\/p>\n In a closely contested second frame, Alcaraz prevailed in a tight tie-break with a perfectly weighted drop shot to seal the match.<\/p>\n The 23-year-old will next face Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili<\/a> or local player Jurij Rodionov<\/a> in the round of 16.<\/p>\n Zverev<\/a> kept alive his hopes of securing the world number one spot before the year-end with a 7-5, 3-6, 7-6 (13\/11)<\/a> win over Landaluce<\/a>.<\/p>\n “(I was pushed) to the absolute limit,” Zverev said. “Credit to (Landaluce), he played an amazing match.”<\/p>\n Zverev is assured of finishing the season atop the rankings, but should he win his next encounter against either Tallon Griekspoor<\/a> or Brandon Nakashima<\/a> and reach the quarter-finals in Vienna, he will claim that spot from injured Italian Jannik Sinner<\/a> in next Monday’s updated rankings.<\/p>\n Zverev secured a crucial second break of the 20-year-old Spaniard’s serve in the 12th game to take the opener 7-5.<\/p>\n But Landaluce riposted by taking an early lead in the second set and serving out to force a decider.<\/p>\n An even set went through to 6-5 for Zverev, and the 29-year-old managed to force two match points on Landaluce’s serve but the young Spaniard held firm to take it to a tie-break.<\/p>\n Zverev dug in over the course of a topsy-turvy breaker, staving off four match points for Landaluce to claim the win for himself at the fifth time of asking when the world number 67 pushed a forehand wide bringing an end to a three-hour-and-five-minute encounter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz won his opening match at the Vienna Open on Tuesday with a straight-sets victory over Karen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-949055","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\/949055","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=949055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}