Alexander Zverev has won his fifth Masters titles at the Western and Southern Open champion after beating Andrey Rublev 6-2, 6-3 in a mere 59 minutes.
The German hit 16 winners during what was the shortest final in the tournament’s history. In contrast, Rublev hit 19 unforced errors. Zverev is the first player from his country to win the title since Boris Becker back in 1985.
” Obviously I felt well from the beginning and I broke in the first game and then the match went my way quite a lot and quite fast,” said Zverev.
“I am obviously quite happy with (this) because with Andrey (Rublev) once he gets going in a match he becomes a dangerous player and he can beat anybody. He showed that yesterday so obviously I’m very happy with how things went”.
The world number five had an amazing start to the match applying pressure on the Rublev serve right from the word play and on his second breakpoint opportunity, he broke to win the first game of the match.
After consolidating the break he had three more chances to go up a double break and did just that for a 3-0 lead and served out the set in just 28 minutes on the clock.
The second set resembled the first set with the German breaking once again in the first game and at 3-1 went up a double break but at 5-2 was broken for the first time in the match. However, the Russian couldn’t hold serve in the following game and Zverev sealed the win with another break.
After the match in his post-match press conference, Zverev spoke about what he can take from this tournament going forward and into the US Open where he was a finalist last year.
“The US Open is a week that everyone is looking forward to,” he said.
“Novak (Djokovic) will be back and I think he is going to be the favorite but I think other guys are going to be in great shape and looking forward to the week. Let’s see how it goes but there is still one week to go and I still have a lot of work ahead of me. I need to find my rhythm in New York as well and I am looking forward to it”.
The US Open begins on August 30th and is the final grand slam of the tennis season being played at the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing, New York.
