By Janina Nuno Rios<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, Sept 1 (Reuters) \u2013 Top seed Alexander Zverev survived a huge scare at the U.S. Open after overcoming Italian Lorenzo Sonego 6-4 3-6 6-7(7) \u200b7-5 6-4 in a first-round thriller that lasted almost \u200cfive hours and stretched into the early hours of Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Zverev arrived in New York as a major champion for the first time after his French Open triumph in June and is widely seen as the man to \u200cbeat \u200bwith world number one Jannik Sinner absent \u2060and defending champion Carlos \u2060Alcaraz recently returning from injury.<\/p>\n
Zverev converted only one of seven break-point opportunities in winning the opening set before world number 89 Sonego responded in the second, breaking early and shifting the \u200bmomentum before serving out to love and sealing the set with an ace.<\/p>\n
A back-and-forth third set went to a tiebreak, \u2060where a double fault from Zverev \u2060handed Sonego the opening he needed to move \u200bahead 2-1.<\/p>\n
After the pair traded breaks in the fourth, Zverev found \u200bhimself two points away from defeat before securing a crucial \u200chold and breaking serve to force a deciding set.<\/p>\n
Zverev completed the turnaround as Sonego ran out of steam, the German happy to avoid becoming the first top seed to lose in the \u2060first round of a Grand Slam since Lleyton Hewitt in 2003 at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just happy I won, that\u2019s it,\u201d Zverev said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it \u2060was an incredible \u200cbattle, lots of ups and downs, nearly five \u2060hours. I think it was my longest first-round \u200bmatch \u200cat a Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would have beaten a \u200blot of \u2060players but I\u2019m happy to be through.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy I won this kind of battle and it was exactly what I needed \u2026 good things happen after you fight through these matches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zverev will next face Frenchman Quentin Halys.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Janina Nuno Rios in New York; Editing \u200bby Peter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Janina Nuno Rios NEW YORK, Sept 1 (Reuters) \u2013 Top seed Alexander Zverev survived a huge scare…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[207,220],"class_list":["post-62895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-french-open","tag-french-open","tag-roland-garros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}