Alexander Zverev ensured his pursuit of an elusive Grand Slam title remained on track with a comprehensive victory over highly-rated teenager Rafael Jodar to reach the French Open semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Second seed Zverev is the highest-ranked man left in the singles draw after a series of shock exits in Paris.<\/p>\n
The German has long been tipped for Grand Slam glory but has struggled in the pressure moments, suffering defeat in three finals and seven semi-finals.<\/p>\n
He came up short against Carlos Alcaraz in the 2024 French Open final, despite leading by two sets to one, and has fallen four times in the Paris last four alone.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s meeting with 19-year-old Jodar was billed as a potentially tricky tie, with the Spaniard tipped to be a future star.<\/p>\n
But Zverev, 10 years Jodar’s senior, used all his experience to come through 7-6 (7-3) 6-1 6-3.<\/p>\n
“I want to keep going and win the matches ahead of me – that is my goal and my aim,” Zverev said.<\/p>\n
“Today was a very good test against a very good player. <\/p>\n
“I am happy to be in the semi-final but for now, that is it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev ensured his pursuit of an elusive Grand Slam title remained on track with a comprehensive victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-680476","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\/680476","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=680476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}