NEW YORK, Sept 5 \u2014 Top seed Alexander Zverev lost his way in the second set \u200bbut got his game back under control to secure a 6-2 7-6(2) 6-2 victory over Alejandro Tabilo and reach the fourth round of the \u200cU.S. Open on Saturday.<\/p>\n
After spending a gruelling nine hours and 26 minutes on court across back-to-back five-setters against Lorenzo \u2060Sonego and Quentin Halys, the last \u200bthing the German would have wanted was \u2060another long night on Arthur Ashe Stadium.<\/p>\n
“My coach was quite smart, he said \u200cthat best-of-five sets doesn’t \u200cmean that you have to play five sets. I didn’t know it \u2060until now, that was quite helpful,” Zverev joked \u2060later.<\/p>\n
“I’m happy with my level right now, it’s going in the right direction and I’m happy to be in the second week.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t practice much yesterday, only an hour, which is very little for me. I’d spent almost 10 hours on court, so I had to find my rhythm somehow. I still \u200cthink I can play better, but for now I’m \u200bhappy with how things are going.”<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old, who won his first Grand Slam title at the French Open and finished runner-up at Wimbledon, stormed out of the blocks by breaking 25th seed Tabilo twice before taking the first set with an unreturnable serve to love.<\/p>\n
Zverev raced to a 4-2 lead in the second set but his level suddenly dropped, allowing world number 28 Tabilo to claim \u200bthree games in a row and go within touching distance of drawing level in the \u200cmatch.<\/p>\n
However, the Chilean was \u200cunable to \u2060press home the advantage and Zverev, after chiding a courtside fan who appeared to be offering coaching advice during the ensuing tiebreak, rediscovered his composure and his best tennis, pulling away to tighten his grip on the match.<\/p>\n
The writing was on the wall \u200cfor Tabilo when Zverev \u200braced ahead 5-2 in the third, and the \u200cGerman booked his place \u2060in the round \u200bof 16 where 21st-seeded Italian Luciano Darderi awaits.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in New York; Editing by \u200bPeter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 5 \u2014 Top seed Alexander Zverev lost his way in the second set \u200bbut got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2879,2878,2881,1796,2880,53,54,2883,2884,50,2882,28,2877,2885,2369],"class_list":["post-67122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-homes","tag-international","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-tennis","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67122","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=67122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}