{"id":59999,"date":"2025-08-05T11:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T11:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/59999\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T11:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T11:07:07","slug":"alexander-zverev-beats-alexei-popyrin-to-reach-toronto-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/59999\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev beats Alexei Popyrin to reach Toronto semis"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORONTO — Top-seeded Alexander Zverev<\/a> rallied to defeat No. 18 Alexei Popyrin<\/a> of Australia 6-7 (8), 6-4, 6-3 on Monday to reach the semifinals of the National Bank Open.<\/p>\n

Zverev, the 2017 tournament champion, will face No. 11 seed Karen Khachanov<\/a> of Russia, who beat No. 26 Alex Michelsen<\/a> of the U.S. 6-4, 7-6 (3).<\/p>\n

Zverev, a German who is ranked No. 3, advanced to his 75th ATP Tour semifinal. He is looking for his 25th tournament title and eighth in an ATP 1000 Masters tournament.<\/p>\n

The other quarterfinals are Tuesday. Second-seeded Taylor Fritz<\/a> will take on No. 6 Andrey Rublev<\/a> of Russia, while No. 4 Ben Shelton<\/a> is slated to meet No. 9 Alex De Minaur<\/a> of Australia. Both semifinals go Wednesday ahead of Thursday’s title match.<\/p>\n

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Popyrin took the first set when his gentle backhand volley after a long rally grazed the top of the net and dropped for the winning point — much to the delight of his fans, including one with an inflatable yellow kangaroo.<\/p>\n

Zverev responded by immediately firing a ball completely out of Sobeys Stadium in frustration, but quickly regrouped to go up 2-0 in the second set.<\/p>\n

Popyrin grabbed a break of his own before holding serve at 4-4. Zverev, who won the Canadian title in Montreal eight years ago when he defeated childhood idol Roger Federer<\/a>, took a 5-4 lead and then again broke his opponent to even the match.<\/p>\n

Ousted at the quarterfinal stage of last year’s tournament, Zverev got another break to go up 2-0 in the third set before serving out the match.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old, who lost to top-ranked Jannik Sinner<\/a> in the final at this year’s Australian Open and made the French Open quarters, improved to 4-0 all-time against Popyrin, including a third-round victory at the Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n

Zverev has two tournament wins on clay this year, and is the highest-ranked player competing in a Toronto field lacking some significant star power after Sinner, No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>, No. 5 Jack Draper<\/a> and No. 6 Novak Djokovic<\/a> all skipped the hard-court event.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old Popyrin, ranked No. 26, had his nine-match winning streak in Canada snapped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO — Top-seeded Alexander Zverev rallied to defeat No. 18 Alexei Popyrin of Australia 6-7 (8), 6-4, 6-3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-59999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59999","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=59999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}