Alexander Zverev beat Karen Khachanov at the US Open to reach a third Grand Slam final in a row and continue his bid for a second major of the year.<\/p>\n
The top seed put in a commanding performance to beat the Russian 6-3 7-6 (9-7) 7-6 (8-6).<\/p>\n
Germany’s Zverev is the favourite in New York after ending his long wait for a Grand Slam title with his French Open triumph in June.<\/p>\n
He reached the Wimbledon final in July, losing in four sets to world number one Jannik Sinner. <\/p>\n
The 29-year-old will play either eighth seed Ben Shelton or 11th seed Frances Tiafoe in Sunday’s showpiece, with the two Americans set to meet in Friday’s night session.<\/p>\n
“I think it [Sunday] will be incredibly special especially, these two guys are crowd favourites and everyone loves them,” said Zverev.<\/p>\n
“Tonight will be an epic semi-final and I am looking forward to watching it. Hopefully I can not make their American dream come true.”<\/p>\n
With Sinner and defending US Open champion Carlos Alcaraz suffering with injuries this year, Zverev has found a consistency that has allowed him to reach all four Grand Slam semi-finals.<\/p>\n
He started off the tournament in New York slowly, being taken to five sets in his opening two matches, but has not dropped a set since.<\/p>\n
Zverev faced brief moments of pressure against world number 50 Khachanov, saving two set points in the third set, but otherwise remained in control.<\/p>\n
“After the second round, at about 3am I was sitting with my team in the locker room and we were laughing at how bad I was playing,” Zverev said.<\/p>\n
“That sense of humour helped me. I obviously have improved a bit otherwise I would not be in the US Open final.”<\/p>\n
Zverev won 13 of 15 points behind his first serve and all nine points at the net in the first set as he broke Khachanov to go 5-3 up before serving out the opener.<\/p>\n
Khachanov fought back after going a break down early in the second set and forced a tie-break, saving set point with a magnificent backhand to polish off a 22-shot rally.<\/p>\n
In a pivotal point of the match, it was Zverev who took the initiative to earn another set point, converting it as he outlasted Khachanov in a draining rally with some magnificent defence from the baseline.<\/p>\n
In the third set, both players remained on serve without conceding a single break point to reach another tie-break.<\/p>\n
It was Khachanov who settled quickest into the tie-break, opening up a lead and creating two set points – both of which were saved by Zverev.<\/p>\n
From there the top seed never looked back, ultimately clinching victory as Khachanov put a forehand long.<\/p>\n
After reaching his sixth major final, Zverev stood arms wide in celebration facing his coaching team, before going to the net to shake hands with Khachanov.<\/p>\n
Victory means Zverev is into his second US Open final after suffering a heartbreaking five-set loss to Dominic Thiem in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev beat Karen Khachanov at the US Open to reach a third Grand Slam final in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-621939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621939","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=621939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}