Alexander Zverev lost his first match since securing the men’s world number one ranking as he suffered a surprise defeat by Alex de Minaur in the semi-finals of the Vienna Open.<\/p>\n
German top seed Zverev, who will replace Jannik Sinner at the summit of the men’s rankings on Monday, lost 4-6 6-1 6-7 (4-7) to the Australian fifth seed.<\/p>\n
Victory means 27-year-old De Minaur has leapfrogged Spain’s Rafael Jodar in the race to qualify for the season-ending ATP Finals.<\/p>\n
“Super proud with how I handled the situation,” said De Minaur <\/p>\n
“I played on my terms. I was going to go out swinging and playing the right type of tennis, and that’s what made the difference today.”<\/p>\n
After losing the first set, Zverev overpowered De Minaur in the second before a hard-fought decider.<\/p>\n
With neither player able to create a break point opportunity, it was De Minaur who held his nerve in the resulting tie-break as he wrapped up victory inside two hours and 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
De Minaur will face Spanish second seed Carlos Alcaraz in the final after he beat Daniil Medvedev in straight sets.<\/p>\n
The seven-time Grand Slam-winner secured a 6-4 7-6 (7-2) victory over the Russian third seed to reach his fifth final of the year.<\/p>\n
The win extended Alcaraz’s unbeaten run at ATP 500 events to 25 matches with the 23-year-old last suffering defeat at that level to Holger Rune at the Barcelona Open in April 2025.<\/p>\n
De Minaur will be competing in his fourth final of the year with his sole title coming at the Rotterdam Open in February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev lost his first match since securing the men’s world number one ranking as he suffered a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-820273","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\/820273","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=820273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}