DGermany’s best tennis player Alexander Zverev is only separated by one victory at the Olympic Games from the likely semi-final duel with top star Novak Djokovic. A long, fantastic quota with his own serve helped the medal candidate on Wednesday in Tokyo to 6: 4, 7: 6 (7: 5) against the Georgian Nikolos Bassilashvili. As the first German in 21 years, Zverev moved into the quarter-finals of the men’s individual competition at the Olympic tennis tournament.
In the round of the best eight, another manageable task awaits against Jeremy Chardy from France on Thursday. The last German quarter-finalist in the Olympic men’s singles competition was Tommy Haas in Sydney in 2000, who won silver in the end. Angelique Kerber last won the women’s silver medal five years ago in Rio de Janeiro.
Rare quota
After two easy rounds, the world number 41 was. Bassilashvili the first difficult task for Zverev at his Olympic premiere. Apart from the slight tremor at the end, he solved this convincingly and impressed for a long time, especially with a rare rate in his service games: Zverev did not allow the Georgian a point in the first set.
He won seven service games in a row to zero. Only after 49 minutes and at 2: 2 in the second set was a rally to the opponent for the first time when Zverev served. However, when it came to ending the match at 5-3 in the second set, the man from Hamburg had problems. Zverev left out match points and equalized the opponent.
The German number one competes in the evening (local time) for the quarter-finals in doubles with Jan-Lennard Struff from the Sauerland. In the individual, Zverev is the last remaining German participant. For Davis Cup colleague Dominik Koepfer, the first Olympic participation ended with a 6: 7 (7: 9), 3: 6 against the Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta.
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