ATP Masters Paris-Bercy: Two match balls awarded - but Alexander Zverev keeps his nerve against Dimitrov
Alexander Zverev had to go into extra time in his round of 16 match at the Paris Masters - but still won in the end.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit: Nov 04, 2021, 08:27 pm
Alexander Zverev already had one leg in the quarter-finals of the ATP Masters tournament in Paris-Bercy - but then had to run an hour longer until the victory was certain: 7: 6 (4), 6: 7 (3) and 6: It was 3 at the end of the day after 2 hours and 45 minutes of play against Grigor Dimitrov.
Zverev got into the match better. Directly at 1: 1 he came to a 0:40 on serve Dimitrov, but the Bulgarian parried; at 3: 3, Zverev then struck. Just to get the rebreak while serving. The tiebreak then ran annoyingly for Dimitrov: A wrong idea after Zverev's attempt to stop at 2: 2, two avoidable errors via slice and with the forehand. Zverev then transformed his second set ball with a brilliant speculation on the net. Zverev celebrated his win with a sarcastic gesture towards the audience, which was clearly on Dimitrov's side - and picked up some boos.
Dimitrov saves two match points
In the second set everything stayed in line, Dimitrov left a break chance at 4: 4. At 5: 6 then Zverev came to 15:40 and two match balls. But Dimitrov held out, bravely fended off the first one with a net attack - he parried Zverev's strong backhand pass brilliantly, with the second he added a serve-forehand volley combination. In the tie-break he played big, took a 3-0 and 5-1 lead and served out.
Dimitrov with early chances, Zverev with the break
Dimitrov took the momentum with him into the decisive round. At 1-0 he had three break chances, especially with the third the field was actually free to pass forehand, at 3-2 there was even a 0:40 ready, but this time Zverev played himself out of trouble. And in the subsequent return game he benefited from three quite free mistakes by Dimitrov at the decisive break. He got another chance to equalize, but Zverev served strongly and in the end celebrated the victory with the second break of the set.
Here you can read the match in the live ticker.
Dimitrov scores more points, but Zverev scores the crucial ones
Winner Zverev made one less than Dimitrov with 106 in the entire match with 105 points. The decisive difference, however, lay in the break-chances exploitation: Zverev was successful in three of his eight chances, Dimitrov only used one break chance of ten. And none of his six pieces in the third movement.
Zverev is in the quarterfinals, where he plays against the winner of the game between Casper Ruud and Marcos Giron.
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