Alexander Zverev reached the semi-finals of the tennis tournament in Halle, Westphalia, for the first time since 2017. The Olympic champion won his quarterfinals against Chilean Nicolas Jarry 7: 5, 6: 3 on Friday and showed a sovereign performance a week and a half before the start of Wimbledon.
Zverev converted his third match ball after 1:57 hours. In the fight for the finals, the native of Hamburg will face Alexander Bublik this Saturday. The Kazakh, who eliminated Jan-Lennard Struff in the round of 16, benefited from Jannik Sinner’s abandonment due to injury. From his point of view, the Italian could not continue playing after a fall at a score of 5: 7, 0: 2.
Zverev has been in the final twice in Halle so far. In 2016 he lost to Florian Mayer, a year later to Roger Federer. “Of course I’m extremely happy to be back in the semi-finals in Germany. It was a hell of a lot of fun today. It was an incredibly beautiful atmosphere,” said Zverev after his deserved victory. “I got a little nervous at the end, but I think that’s quite normal.”
Zverev acted concentrated in the well-filled OWL Arena from the start. Especially with his own serve, the crowd’s favorite didn’t burn much. After he could not use three breakballs when the Chilean served when the score was 3:2, he made the decisive break to make it 7:5 and got the first round after 57 minutes with the first set ball. Zverev clenched his fist, his girlfriend Sophia Thomalla jumped up enthusiastically in the stands – everything went according to plan for the semi-finalist of the French Open.
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Zverev couldn’t be stopped in the second set either. The 26-year-old managed a quick break. When the score was 4:2, he then had to fend off the first three breakballs of the game against himself, but won a long service game. Jarry didn’t give up, but Zverev brought the victory to the finish and can therefore continue to dream of the first title in the German lawn classic.
