Super Sascha Stellar Against Shapo
Alexander Zverev’s start to 2018 was not what you may have expected after a breakout 2017, which saw him win five ATP World Tour titles. Three of the German’s first four losses came against opposition outside the Top 50 of the ATP Rankings. But ever since, the 21-year-old has been on a tear.
Zverev continued his run of excellent form on Saturday by defeating #NextGenATP Canadian Denis Shapovalov 6-4, 6-1 for his eighth consecutive victory, advancing to the Mutua Madrid Open final.
"It was great. It was a great match," Zverev said. "Obviously it's not easy to play Denis. Great player. Great talent. Hopefully he'll still improve and there are a lot more matches like this in the future."
It is the fourth ATP World Tour Masters 1000 final of the World No. 3’s young career, and Zverev now stands alone as the only player to reach four title matches at the elite level in the past year (2017 Rome, 2017 Montreal, 2018 Miami). The 2017 Nitto ATP Finals qualifier was already the only player to reach five Masters 1000 semi-finals in the past year.
And if Zverev goes on to defeat clay stalwart Dominic Thiem, against whom he trails 1-4 in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series, he will become just the fifth active player to capture three Masters 1000 titles (Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, Murray).
Although Zverev and Shapovalov are 21 years old and 19 years old, respectively, the moment was not new. They played one another in the semi-finals of last year's Rogers Cup, where the German went on to win the title.
"I've been in this moment before. We've played each other in this moment before," Zverev said. "I'm just happy to be in the final and play for another Masters [1000] title."
Early on, it looked like the late-night Manolo Santana crowd was in for a battle between two of tennis’ brightest talents. Neither player earned a break point through eight games, trading cleanly-struck groundstrokes on both wings.
But on Zverev’s first break chance of the match, he leaned into the doubles alley in the ad court to cut off Shapovalov’s sliding lefty serve, and launched a missile-like backhand return down the line that the 19-year-old was barely able to get his racquet on.
From that point on, all the momentum was with Zverev under the watchful eye of German Boris Becker and legendary Spaniard Manolo Santana, Madrid’s tournament director. The No. 2 seed had an answer for all of the Canadian’s offence, playing stellar neutralising defence before stepping into the court himself. Zverev broke in the opening game of the second set and then twice more, closing out the 57-minute clash when Shapovalov missed a one-handed backhand long.
Last week's Munich champion lost only nine points in eight service games against the 2017 Next Gen ATP Finals qualifier, and did not face a break point. The German has faced just one break point in the entire tournament, winning more than 83 per cent (115/138) of his service points in his past three matches.
Shapovalov arrived in the Spanish capital without an ATP World Tour match win on clay. In fact, he owned just a 1-4 clay-court record on the ATP Challenger Tour. But the Canadian found some of his best tennis to become the youngest quarter-finalist and semi-finalist in event history. Against Zverev, he was attempting to become the youngest Masters 1000 finalist since 18-year-old Richard Gasquet battled to the championship match at Hamburg in 2005.
"It's been an amazing week. Obviously it's tough to feel positive after a loss," Shapovalov said. "Getting my first win on the ATP [World] Tour on clay here, making the semi-finals of such a big tournament, I could never imagine to do so. I'm very happy. It's been a huge, huge confidence booster for me."
Did You Know?
Alexander Zverev has excelled on his second serve in the past two rounds, winning more than 81 per cent (26/32) of those points.