At the start of the season, the odds on Zverev winning two Grand Slam titles would have been long. They are considerably shorter now.<\/p>\n
The French Open champion is a slight favourite to beat Shelton as he looks to double his tally of major wins – not only for the year, but his career.<\/p>\n
After three defeats in major finals, many thought the 29-year-old had missed his chance to win one of the sport’s biggest prizes given how Sinner and Alcaraz – who swept the Grand Slams in 2024 and 2025 and together earned the ‘Sincaraz’ tag – have dominated.<\/p>\n
But injuries to the standout pair – Alcaraz missing the French Open and Wimbledon, with Sinner ruled out of the US Open – have opened the door for someone else to make a push.<\/p>\n
Asked if he thought he could end 2026 with more major wins than them, Zverev said: “I believed in it. I believed that it’s possible. I think not many of you guys did.<\/p>\n
“I think the question was always: Is Carlos and Jannik going to play all four Grand Slam finals between each other again?<\/p>\n
“Of course, it was a very legit question with how the last two years went. I’m happy with how this year went so far, but I’ve got another big match on Sunday.”<\/p>\n
Zverev is contesting his second US Open final, having squandered a two-set lead against Dominic Thiem in 2020 – a gutting defeat that cut deep.<\/p>\n
In the seasons that followed, Zverev often played in the latter stages at Slams with the demeanour of a man who lacked belief that his time would ever come.<\/p>\n
His mental misgivings were finally put to bed by beating Italy’s Flavio Cobolli in the final at Roland Garros and, after finishing runner-up to Sinner at Wimbledon, he has now reached a third successive Grand Slam final.<\/p>\n
A below-par Zverev ground through the opening rounds at Flushing Meadows in a series of early-morning finishes, but he gradually improved over a fortnight where he has not yet faced a top-20 opponent.<\/p>\n
Shelton will present a considerable step up in quality but, like Cobolli, is another opponent who may feel the weight of occasion too difficult to bear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the start of the season, the odds on Zverev winning two Grand Slam titles would have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-846335","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\/846335","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=846335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}