Jannik Sinner was eliminated in the semi-finals. © APA / afp / MARTIN BUREAU
Jannik Sinner lost his ATP semifinals in Cologne against Alexander Zverev on Saturday evening. The German has succeeded in taking revenge for his French Open against the young South Tyrolean.
October 24, 2020
For the second time in his career, Jannik Sinner was in the semifinals of an ATP tournament on Saturday. But it wasn’t enough for the final: Against the world number 7. The young South Tyrolean had to admit defeat to Zverev 6: 7 (3), 3: 6. Nevertheless, Sinner played a strong tournament and collected a total of 90 world ranking points. He will appear in the ATP ranking from Monday at position 43 – so it is still going up steeply.
Against Zverev, the first set was particularly hard-fought and balanced, but the German was better in the second round. However, Zverev has once again shown his eccentric character. Again and again he nagged about balls that were given out, but in his opinion were still good, so once he threw the bat to the ground in anger. In the second sentence, this behavior also upset the otherwise calm and level-headed Sinner, which is why the two fought briefly. In the end, however, Zverev praised the young Sinner. “He will soon be in the top 10,” predicted the tennis star.
By the way, Zverev succeeded in taking revenge: Just a few weeks ago, Sinner prevailed against the German in the round of 16 of the French Open and caused a small sensation. Thanks to his victory, Zverev is now moving into the final in Cologne, where he will meet the winner of the game Felix Auger-Aliassime against Diego Schwartzman. By the way, Zverev won the first tournament in Cologne last week.
Sinner got off to a dream start
Both players started the game slightly bruised: Zverev recently struggled with hip problems, while Sinner had a slight cold. Nevertheless, the young South Tyrolean got a better start into the match. While he was confident with his own service and didn’t let anything go wrong, he repeatedly caused problems for Zverev when he served. It was therefore not surprising that the Sextner used his 4th break chance in the 4th game, set it to 3: 1 and then even pulled away to 4: 1.
Alexander Zverev had the upper hand against Jannik Sinner. © APA / afp / INA FASSBENDER
But then something slowly crept into Sinner – probably also because the marathon match on Friday against Gilles Simon left its mark. Sinner made a few minor mistakes that Zverev used and so came back into the game. The German caught up point by point and was suddenly 5: 4 ahead. Especially when serving on his own, Sinner felt more difficult – as he had done more often these days – overall, he allowed 3 breaks in the first set. On the other hand, he got just as many serves from the opponent, so that the set had to be decided in the tie-break. And here Zverev had the better end for himself.
In the second round, the German really got going, immediately took the serve from Sinner and pulled away to 4: 1. Game 7 turned out to be decisive, which lasted over 10 minutes and which Zverev finally won on its own serve – 5: 2. The decision, because a little later Sinner’s opponent converted his first match point to 6: 3.
Author: it
