NEW YORK \u2014 Alejandro Tabilo was self-critical after his flat performance on Arthur Ashe against German Alexander Zverev.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I play these matches, I come out tense, nervous. It was a very ugly start I was not feeling the ball at all, my serve was terrible. When I am not serving well, I start to get tense from the baseline. I have to work on the mental side,\u201d he admitted after his 6-2, 7-6 (7-2) and 6-2 defeat in the third round of the US Open.<\/p>\n
A d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu of his defeat to the world No. 2 a year ago: three sets, few opportunities, many errors and a stadium so large it made him feel small.<\/p>\n
Fifteen games of insipid tennis went by. Only at 3-4 in the second set did Tabilo show some fight, when he broke with a running forehand passing shot that he celebrated effusively with his team, positioned directly across from where he hit the winner.<\/p>\n
It seemed he was finally getting into the match: Zverev was showing signs of fatigue from two first rounds that had ended close to two in the morning, gesturing in discomfort towards his box. But Chile\u2019s No. 1 made a couple of unforgivable errors in the tie-break.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was talking with Juanpi (his coach Juan Pablo G\u00e1ndara) in the locker room \u2014 I have to come out a little more wanting to go for the kill. I had him there; I just needed to be a little more aggressive,\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n
From there the tentative, spark-free tennis returned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI created a lot of opportunities by making him play \u2014 from the baseline I was much more solid than him in the second set. On the break points, I needed to go for the ball. If I missed, I missed, but I needed to want to go for it,\u201d analysed the world No. 28.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I have been playing well, so I set myself expectations\u2026 I want to believe I can beat these players. Something I need to talk through properly with the team: how to approach these matches much better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The positives?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very good tournament. Being able to play in this stadium\u2026 Also lasting four sets \u2014 which used to cost me a great deal \u2014 means I have been working very well on my fitness again. The Asian swing is coming up, which went well for me last year, and I would like to keep that momentum going. And the most important thing is coming: Davis Cup. Going home and preparing on clay \u2014 we have to go all out as a team,\u201d the Chilean concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Alejandro Tabilo was self-critical after his flat performance on Arthur Ashe against German Alexander Zverev.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3864,243,28,463],"class_list":["post-67071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alexander-zverev","tag-alejandro-tabilo","tag-alexander-zverev","tag-tennis","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67071","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=67071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}