{"id":432721,"date":"2026-01-27T12:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T12:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/432721\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T12:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T12:28:10","slug":"australian-open-2026-alexander-zverev-thanks-serve-for-victory-over-learner-tien-to-reach-semi-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/432721\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Alexander Zverev thanks serve for victory over Learner Tien to reach semi-finals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Zverev said this year&#8217;s Australian Open is the first time he has been playing &#8220;pain-free&#8221; in 12 months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 28-year-old tore ligaments in his ankle during his French Open semi-final against Rafael Nadal in 2022 &#8211; a career-threatening injury that kept him out of action for six months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The last 10 days I felt healthy, and pain-free, which I haven&#8217;t felt in a long time. Probably in 12 months,&#8221; Zverev said after his win over Tien.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I feel like I&#8217;m happy on the court because I am playing pain-free and a good level.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Zverev has improved his serve in recent years, adding more consistency after double faults previously plagued his game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In 2020, when he reached the semi-finals in Melbourne and the final at the US Open, he was averaging 5.9 double faults per match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He has improved on that figure every year since and, in 2025, his average stood at 1.9.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Zverev will face either world number one Carlos Alcaraz or sixth seed Alex de Minaur, the last Australian left standing in singles, in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zverev said this year&#8217;s Australian Open is the first time he has been playing &#8220;pain-free&#8221; in 12 months.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-432721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}