Alexander Zverev reached second round from Melbourne without any problems
After 1:55 hours, the 21-year-old converted his second match ball on the center court of the Rod Laver Arena thanks to a run stop ball to 6: 4, 6: 1, 6: 4 against Aljaz Bedene from Slovenia. Here is the match tracker .
by Ulrike Weinrich from Melbourne
last edit: Jan 15, 2019, 08:06 am
In the next round there is definitely a Frenchman waiting for ATP world champion Zverev: either Jeremy Chary and Ugo Humbert.
Zverev was extremely solid on the Center Court. The ankle injury that he sustained in a training match on Thursday was no longer felt.
"The ankle is still a little swollen, but it's getting better every day," he said, joking in an on-court interview with Jim Courier: "My body is currently close to perfection."
One thing was clear: even Lendl was allowed to briefly disappear
After a double fault in the first game, the fourth in the world rankings was immediately faced with a breakball. But with an ace he solved the first challenge against Bedene, who could not win a single match in his six previous participations in "Happy Sam".
The number 67 has no similarly devastating record in any of the other Grand Slam tournaments. Zverev still had to give up his serve to 3: 4.
But it was "a wake-up call" after a somewhat "bumpy start", as he later said himself, because the next eight games in a row were won by "Sascha", who is still waiting for his first semi-final appearance at a major event.
In the 5-0 lead of his protégé, even his coach Ivan Lendl could afford to leave the box briefly. When Zverev broke his serve to zero in the third set at 2-1, "Ivan the Terrible" was back in his seat. As so often - with a sinister expression, blue polo shirt and mirror sunglasses.
The German number one set the course for victory when he made his sixth break in the ominous seventh game of the third round.