World number two Zverev has enjoyed his best year on the Tour, reaching the semi-finals at the Australian Open and the final at Wimbledon alongside his French Open and US Open successes.<\/p>\n
He has been aided by injuries to Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, who swept the majors in the past two seasons, but a strengthened mentality and dedication to fitness has also helped.<\/p>\n
“There is no-one as fit as Zverev, he is right up there,” former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli said on BBC Radio 5 Live.<\/p>\n
“You can argue about Alcaraz and Sinner, and Novak [Djokovic] and Rafa [Nadal] when they were in their prime physically, but Zverev is right up there as one of the best athletes to play the sport.”<\/p>\n
Zverev was taken to five sets in his first two matches, with both finishing in the early hours of the New York morning.<\/p>\n
He was two points from defeat in the first round, but rallied, played his way into form and did not drop a set from the third round until the final.<\/p>\n
Faced with a partisan crowd against Shelton, Zverev did not buckle. He kept his emotions deliberately in check and, even though he lost the third set, never loosened his grip on the match.<\/p>\n
“I’m so admiring of his strength of character and the zen-like state he’s been in since the very beginning of the match,” said former British number one Annabel Croft. <\/p>\n
“The most extraordinary thing – and I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed it – was that he didn’t realise he had won.<\/p>\n
“It was so bizarre, but it was like he was in a trance-like state while he was playing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number two Zverev has enjoyed his best year on the Tour, reaching the semi-finals at the Australian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-770278","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\/770278","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=770278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}