Zverev,Thiem in GenNext semis
German 22-year-old defeats three-time Grand Slam winner Stan Wawrinka after a jittery start
MELBOURNE: Alexander Zverev began 2020 with three consecutive losses, which meant he had plenty of problems—and plenty of time on his hands ahead of the Australian Open. So he showed up early and got to work, spending up to seven hours a day practising in the week before the decade’s first Grand Slam tournament. That extra time paid off. So did a somewhat more relaxed attitude once this event began. And how.
Zverev, a 22-year-old from Germany, reached his first major semi-final by overcoming a terrible start on Wednesday at Melbourne Park and putting together a 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 victory over three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka. “I was very impatient. In a way, also was maybe paying attention to it too much, to the Grand Slams. You know what I mean?” said Zverev, who has won three Masters titles and the ATP Tour Finals. “Everything else, I was just playing better tennis at the other tournaments .... The Grand Slams, maybe, meant too much for me. This year I actually came into the Australian Open with absolutely no expectations because I was playing horrible.”
After ceding the opening set in 24 minutes, Zverev regrouped, using all of his 6-foot-6 (1.98-meter) frame to get to balls along the baseline and stretch points until Wawrinka faltered. Zverev’s sometimes-shaky serve—he was double-faulting once per game while losing all of his matches at the season-opening ATP Cup— was suddenly terrific, and Wawrinka’s barrel-chested baseline bashing weakened.
How bad were things earlier in January for Zverev? “I’ve been struggling with my forehand, my backhand, my volleys, my drop shot, my return. My waking up in the morning. My everything,” he joked. “It was not only my serve.”
Zverev also was self-deprecating before his first-round match last week, saying that he knew no one considered him a favourite to win the championship. After his opening victory, he pledged to donate all of the champion’s prize money, a little more than 4 million Australian dollars—about $2.85 million—to relief efforts for the wildfires raging around the country if he were to go all the way.
“I know that there’s people right now in this country, in this beautiful country, that lost their homes and actually they need the money. They actually depend on it, building up their homes again, building up their houses again, building up the nature that Australia has, the animals as well,” Zverev said. “I think there’s much better use for those people with that money.”
Just two matches to go now. Wawrinka’s backhand is among the most respected and feared shots in all of men’s tennis. But it let him down on this day: He finished with five winners and 31 errors on that side, 18 unforced and 13 forced. “After one set and a half, for sure, I was going a bit down physically,” Wawrinka said. “Also lack of energy.”
It all added up to Zverev getting to the final four at a major in his 19th appearance. He had been 0-2 in quarterfinals.
“The Grand Slams were always the week where I kind of even wanted it too much. I was doing things, in a way, too professional. I was not talking to anybody. I wasn’t going out with friends. I wasn’t having dinner. I was just really almost too, too focused,” Zverev explained. “Changed that a little bit this week. I’m doing much more things outside the court.”
On Friday, he’ll take on No. 5 Dominic Thiem for a berth in the final.
Zverev and Wawrinka, a dozen years older at 34, played on the steamiest afternoon of the tournament so far, with the temperature in the mid-80s Fahrenheit (about 30 °C) and no breeze to speak of. Wawrinka had a far tougher trek to the quarter-finals, with a pair of five-set wins along the way—including over No. 4 Daniil Medvedev, the 2019 U.S. Open runner-up, in his previous outing—while Zverev hadn’t dropped a set.
Yet it took merely 16 minutes for Wawrinka to move out to a 5-0 lead by grabbing 20 of the match’s first 26 points, helped immensely by Zverev’s issues controlling the ball: He accumulated nine unforced errors and just one winner in that span.
But Zverev realized he needed to put less into his shots on such a hot day, when the tennis balls zoom much more than in cooler weather. He also got into a real groove serving, taking all 20 points in those games in the second set.
That allowed him to play more freely in his return games and he broke to go up 5-3 when Wawrinka shanked a backhand on one point, then netted a forehand on the next. Zverev shook his right fist and bellowed, “Come ooooooooon!”
One more hold at love later, he evened things at a set apiece.
A backhand into the net by Wawrinka gave Zverev the key break in the third set. A backhand long let Zverev break for 1-0 in the fourth, and another backhand into the net put Zverev up a double break at 3-0.
Notice a pattern?
“I (started) to do a few mistakes,” Wawrinka said. “I put him back (in) the match.”