Turin... via Paris, Tsitsipas
With today's victory, the Greek tennis player secured his participation for another year in the ATP Finals, which will be hosted November 12-19 in Turin.
The next opponent of Stefanos Tsitsipas will be the Russian Karen Khachanov (No. 15 in the world), who a little earlier prevailed with an upset (4-6, 6-4, 6-2) of his compatriot, Roman Shafiulin. The Greek tennis player previously had an impressive "6 out of 6" against Khachanov, but was defeated in their last encounter, at the Miami Masters, last March. The start of the match was ideal for Tsitsipas, who took a 3-0 lead by breaking in the second game and coming back from 15-40 in the next, while also missing two break points for 4-0. On the first point of the fifth game, the Greek champion stepped awkwardly and injured his right leg, but after about a five-minute break and the necessary care of the physiotherapist, he recovered and easily held his serve to 5-2. But when the set came to an end, "Steph" made effortless mistakes, missed two set points and allowed Zverev to break, cut to 5-4 and then level at 5-5 and 6-6 . In the tie-break, however, Tsitsipas found excellent serves (three aces and another that the German couldn't return), took three points on his opponent's serve and won it 7-2, winning the first set.
With psychology back in his favor, Tsitsipas started the second set with a break and from then on he tried to hold his serve to "close" the match. In the 8th game he found himself behind 0-30, but got out of the difficult position with consecutive excellent serves (two aces), while at 5-3 he lost two match-points, with Zverev making it 5-4 with an ace. With the match "on a razor's edge", "Steph" again found two big serves and, with a volley and an ace, "wrote" 6-4 and celebrated the victory.
