LONDON – After 12 fairly ugly and boring matches in the group stages at this year’s ATP Finals, the first semifinal deservedly won by Sasha Zverev against Roger Federer offered plenty of entertainment, unlike the second semifinal dominated by Novak Djokovic over Kevin Anderson. Since losing the Queen’s final to Marin Cilic in June, Djokovic raised his level and jumped to world No. 1 once again, capturing 35 of the last 37 matches he played.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Novak is now unbeatable since a bad day at the office can happen to anybody. It is also complicated to beat the same player twice in the same week. In 18 occasions, the championship match was contested by two players that had previously faced each other in the group stages, and 50% of the times the player that lost in the round-robin ended up winning the final.
Nevertheless, Djokovic is the overwhelming favorite in Sunday’s final. He defeated Zverev 64 61 three days ago in their round-robin match and dominated his younger rival 62 61 in Shanghai about a month ago. On Wednesday the big serving German was able to stay with Novak until the score was 4-4 in the first set. He also had two break-points to go up 5-4 and serve for the set but he fell apart after squandering those two opportunities – one by missing an easy lob with Djokovic in the wrong position at the net.
Ivan Lendl, who started working with Zverev earlier this year, was furious about Sasha’s lackluster performance in the second set, so I do believe that the German will at least try to compete at his best throughout the entire championship match instead of throwing in the towel mid-match. If Zverev has a good serving day, we are certainly in for a competitive match, despite Djokovic’s outstanding return game.
Djokovic was all over Anderson’s serve in yesterday’s semifinal, breaking the South African early in each set and taking absolute control of the match. The Serb has also been serving impeccably this week, hitting all the spots and never dropping serve in four matches.
Zverev showed an incredibly high level of tennis against Roger Federer and prevailed over the Swiss maestro in the first semifinal of the day. Sasha was surprisingly more aggressive than Roger, who at 37 years of age seems to be a step slower than in the past. Therefore, it was crucial for Roger to put pressure on his opponent, but the German didn’t allow him to control the patterns of play.
Roger played a horrendous service game at the end of the first set and went on to squander a break advantage at the start of the second. Federer was able to break back and force a tie-breaker, during which we witnessed the most controversial moment of the match. With Federer leading 4-3, Zverev stopped mid-rally after a ball slipped from a ballboy’s hand and into his line of vision. When the point was replayed — as the rules allow for when a ballkid drops a ball — Zverev served his seventh ace of the match. The crowd thought that Zverev was given an unfair advantage by the chair umpire and they started booing against the German.
Roger talked about the incident in his post-match press conference: “As soon as the ballboy and line judge confirmed what happened, the obvious choice was to replay the point. I am not questioning Sasha’s sportsmanship. He actually showed some courage to stop the rally, because the umpire could have said something like: ‘Sorry, you are in the middle of a rally, I didn’t see anything, you lose the point.’ That’s why I wanted to clarify the situation with the chair umpire, who made his decision after talking to the ballkid and line judge. I am not quite sure what the rule is in this case.”
The boos and heckling from the crowd were absolutely unfair and disrespectful. Zverev outplayed Federer during the entire match and deserved to win. I believe that most of the spectators didn’t quite understand what happened and why Zverev stopped that rally.
Zverev – who is not of the nicest guys on tour and often seems quite arrogant – this time showed his softer side and apologized to the crowd in his post-match interview, understanding that most of them were there to support Federer.
At 21 years of age, Zverev is the youngest finalist at the year-end championships since Juan Martin del Potro in 2009. Novak Djokovic is looking to win title number six that would equal Roger Federer’s record.
(Article translation provided by T&L Global – Translation & Language Solutions – www.t-lglobal.com )
