MELBOURNE, Jan 27 – Germany’s Alexander Zverev remained on track for a return to the Australian Open final after beating American Learner Tien 6-3 6-7(5) 6-1 7-6(3) in the Melbourne Park quarter-finals on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The big-serving third seed, who finished runner-up to Jannik Sinner last year, will face either Carlos Alcaraz or Alex de Minaur in the last four in what will be his fourth semi-final at the event.<\/p>\n
“Learner, from the baseline, was playing unbelievable,” said Zverev, who posted 24 aces and one double fault throughout the match. <\/p>\n
“I don’t think I’ve played anyone who plays that well from the baseline for a very, very long time. I don’t know what (Tien’s coach) Michael Chang has done with him in the off-season, but the way he’s playing it’s incredible. <\/p>\n
“Without my 20 aces, or something like that, I probably wouldn’t have won today, so obviously very happy with my serve. And just generally happy to be back in the semis.”<\/p>\n
Zverev secured a break in the sixth game of the opening set when 20-year-old Tien sent a crosscourt backhand just beyond the tramlines to give the German the upper hand.<\/p>\n
There was little between the pair in the second set, which Tien shaded in the tiebreak having beaten Zverev with a fine passing shot to set himself up for a set point that he gleefully converted.<\/p>\n
However, Zverev pulled clear in the third set, eliminating the unforced errors and breaking twice to ease ahead.<\/p>\n
The fourth set went on serve but Zverev took command in the tiebreak and booked his place in the next round. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Jan 27 – Germany’s Alexander Zverev remained on track for a return to the Australian Open final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-259802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}