With a surprising victory over world No. 2 Novak Djokovic in the Italian Open final, Sascha Zverev announced his arrival among the tennis elite.
ROME – The future has already become the present. The new Italian Open champion Sascha Zverev emphasized with a timid smile that the future is now: “Unfortunately the top four players – Federer at 35 years of age, Nadal at 31, both Murray and Djokovic at 30 – can’t play forever. The ATP is doing an excellent job to promote the Next Gen players.”
Last week in Rome, the young guns sent a strong message to the rest of the field with the German scoring a sequence of impressive wins over Anderson, Troicki, Fognini, Raonic, Isner and, last but definitely not least, Djokovic. Dominic Thiem’s brilliant performance in a stunning victory over Rafa Nadal also contributed to the fascinating idea that a changing of the guard at the top of the men’s game is not so far away. The first big victory of Sascha Zverev – a future world No. 1 according to many tennis analysts – has been in the air for a few months, although the impressive 6-1, 6-0 semifinal scoreline with which Novak Djokovic sent Dominc Thiem back to the drawing board had deceived the majority of the bookmakers. On Sunday morning, the Bet365 odds for Zverev’s victory were 5 to 1.
We certainly could not expect that the four time Italian Open champion would only win nine points in nine Zverev’s service games. The youngster’s impressive serving against one of the best returners in the history of the game was one of the keys to Zverev’s success. His first serve speed averaged 130 mph and his second delivery was often not far off the 120 mph mark. This allowed him to win 27 points out of 32 when he made the first serve and 11 points out of 13 on his second serve. He only double faulted twice in the entire match. Besides a service master class, Zverev’s backhand looked particularly sharp as well.
“It was my best clay court match ever,” said Zverev in his post-match press conference. On the other hand, Djokovic was disappointed about his performance in the final: “Against Thiem I played my best match of the last 10 months, while today I was only at 30%.”
On a beautiful afternoon in the Eternal City and in front of a packed stadium, the Djokovic-Zverev clash was anticipated by the ladies final won by Elina Svitolina, who took advantage of an ankle injury that affected Simona Halep’s performance in the second and third set. The Ukrainian is now No. 6 in the WTA rankings. The legendary Rod Laver – the only person to have completed two Calendar Year Grand Slams – was awarded the golden racket by the Italian Tennis Federation.
Despite a quite boring match, the men’s final will definitely be remembered as the first great win of Sascha Zverev. Djokovic dropped serve in the first game of the first set and then again in the third and ninth games of the second, while he never managed to make an impact in Zverev’s service games. At the end of the match, Djokovic announced that Andre Agassi will be his coach for a “trial period” at Roland Garros, but the American legend will not be able to stay in Paris for the entire tournament. The agreement between the two was reached after two weeks of phone calls. In the past few years, Lendl did an outstanding job with Murray and so did Becker with Djokovic and Edberg with Federer. But many wonder if the “super coach” is a real necessity or simply a marketing choice.
Men’s final: Zverev d. Djokovic 6-4, 6-3
Women’s final: Svitolina d. Halep 4-6, 7-5, 6-1
(Article translation provided by T&L Global – Translation & Language Solutions – www.t-lglobal.com )
