A cramping Carlos Alcaraz had to draw on every physical and mental reserve to come back from the brink and beat Alexander Zverev to reach a first Australian Open final.<\/p>\n
Spain’s Alcaraz came through 6-4 7-6 (7-5) 6-7 (3-7) 6-7 (4-7) 7-5 after an enthralling five hours and 27 minutes – but the scoreline barely hints at the drama that occurred in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz had clinched the first two sets and was cruising when, serving at 4-4 in the third, he suddenly pulled up and was left barely able to serve or move.<\/p>\n
The world number one took a medical timeout – leaving third seed Zverev irate – and looked a shadow of his former self as his German opponent forced a decider.<\/p>\n
Zverev went an early break up in the fifth set and served for the match at 5-4, before Alcaraz produced a scarcely believable comeback.<\/p>\n
Buoyed by the crowd, Alcaraz broke to get the match back on serve and then capitalised on Zverev’s nerves as the German served at 6-5 down to try to force a 10-point tie-break.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz fell to the floor in complete disbelief as Zverev missed a backhand and sent him into Sunday’s showpiece.<\/p>\n
“I always say that you have to believe in yourself no matter what,” Alcaraz said.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t be here right now without these guys [the crowd]. The way you pushed me back into the match on every point is crazy.”<\/p>\n
Victory keeps alive the 22-year-old’s bid to write more tennis history – should he win on Sunday, he will become the youngest man to complete the career Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
Only Novak Djokovic – and Alcaraz’s own physical condition – now stand in the way of a fourth successive Grand Slam final between the Spaniard and Jannik Sinner.<\/p>\n
Serb Djokovic, bidding for a record 25th major singles title, faces world number two Sinner later on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cramping Carlos Alcaraz had to draw on every physical and mental reserve to come back from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-271752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}