maiden grand slam success in Paris<\/a> \u2013 at the 41st attempt \u2013 Zverev avoided a similar fate at the hands of Alexander Blockx, the 21-year-old rising star from Belgium, racing through a fourth-set tie break to love for a 6-4, 6-7 (8), 7-6 (5), 7-6 (0) win as Blockx\u2019s spirited resistance in the face of a barrage of big serves finally wilted. But it was not without a couple of moments when the No 2 seed\u2019s aim went absent without leave, just when he needed it most.<\/p>\nIn the opening set, Zverev sent down a relentless rat-a-tat of first serves at 130mph-plus, finding the service court \u2013 and frequently the line \u2013 with 21 from 26, and winning four of five second-serve points for good measure. His opponent kept pace until the ninth game but finally yielded in miserable fashion, surrendering a tentative and error-strewn service game to love, allowing Zverev to serve it out with ease.<\/p>\n
For much \u2013 in fact, almost all \u2013 of the second set, the script remained the same, and Zverev\u2019s first-serve percentage even cranked up a notch, to 82%, although Blockx managed to avoid his earlier ninth-game wobble and it went to a tie-break without a single break point on either side.<\/p>\n
And now, with the players having traded mini-breaks and a set point apiece to reach 9-8, the Zverev serve suddenly came apart. Blockx\u2019s second set point was the worst possible time for the German to produce his first double-fault of the match, and his head was still scrambled at the start of the third as his next five serves also went either long, wide or into the net.<\/p>\n
Alexander Blockx is into the world\u2019s top 40 for the first time after a fine clay court season. Photograph: Tom Jenkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Blockx, who made rapid progress during the clay court season to reach the world\u2019s top 40 for the first time, had scarcely seen a second serve to attack to this point, never mind three break points all at once. But his opponent managed to reboot himself in the nick of time, reeled off five points in a succession and edged ahead once more by taking the third-set tie-break to five.<\/p>\n
After an early break in the fourth set, Zverev looked poised for an easy run to victory. Again, though, the gremlins appeared to play havoc with his service action, and Blockx was handed an almost completely unearned break-back as the German sent down three double-faults in the space of four points.<\/p>\n
The French Open champion has never been past the fourth round here and will need to cut out the wobbles if he is to improve on that this year, starting with his second-round match against Valentin Royer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I saw the draw, I thought, here we go again, same thing as last year,\u201d Zverev said. \u201cThe way he\u2019s come up the rankings has been incredible to see. It\u2019s not difficult [to follow up on the win in Paris] but I just struggle on this beautiful court. I love to play here, but at times I still struggle. I\u2019m getting older and hopefully I\u2019m getting better as well, and I hope to have my best result at Wimbledon so far this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zverev recently revealed that he has an allergy to grass, but did not use that as an excuse for his relative struggles in SW19. \u201cThere are a lot of pills and a lot of sneezing and a lot of a stuffed nose,\u201d he said. \u201cUnfortunately for me, but it\u2019s just how it is, I can\u2019t do anything about it and I\u2019m dealing with it. I do feel fine, I\u2019m not sick or anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoland Garros really helps, but I do believe that I can play well on this surface if I can get through a couple of matches.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev\u2019s serve is at once among the most potent and also the most perplexing weapons in tennis.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-666897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}