Zverev in Rome summit clash
Rome, May 20: Germany’s Alexander Zverev became the youngest player in a decade to reach a Masters final when he clinched a gutsy 6-4, 6-7 (5/7), 6-1 win over big-serving American John Isner in Rome on Saturday.
Zverev, 20, will meet either four-time winner Novak Djokovic or Austria's Dominic Thiem in Sunday's final.
Djokovic was the previous youngest Masters finalist, going all the way to the title in Miami as a 19-year-old in 2007.
Zverev and Djokovic have never played but Thiem leads their head-tohead 4-1, including all three meetings on clay.
Zverev will climb to a new career high in the rankings at number 14 by reaching the final and would break into the top 10 with the title.
Djokovic, the second seed and the only previous Masters winner still in contention, plays eighth seed Thiem later Saturday after completing his raininterrupted quarter-final against Juan Martin del Potro to beat the unseeded Argentinian 6-1, 6-4.
Thiem, beaten to the Madrid Masters title by Rafael Nadal last week, avenged his loss by dumping Spain’s former seventime Rome champion out in the quarters on Friday.
Second-ranked Djokovic had taken a one-set lead over Del Potro, who held a 2-1 lead in the second set before heavy rain and lightning halted play on Friday. In the WTA event, French Open champion Garbine Muguruza was forced to retire due to a neck injury from her semifinal against Ukraine's Elina Svitolina.
The Spanish third seed was 1-4 down after just 22 minutes in the first set when she quit, handing the eighth-seeded Svitolina a place in Sunday’s final against Romania's Simona Halep. Bopanna, Sania exit Rohan Bopanna made a quarterfinal exit from the ATP Rome Masters while Sania Mirza exited from the WTA event following a semifinal defeat here.
Bopanna and his partner Pablo Cuevas went down to Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut 6-7(5), 7-6(2), 10-12 in the quarterfinals while Sania and Yaroslava Shvedova lost 3-6, 6-7(7) to Yung-Jan Chan and Martina Hingis in the semfinals. — Agencies