US Open: Top seed Alexander Zverev avoids first-round disaster, holds off Lorenzo Sonego in 5 sets
That could have been a whole lot worse for Alexander Zverev.
The US Open’s top seed avoided a historic first-round upset on Tuesday, holding off Italian challenger Lorenzo Sonego 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (9-7), 7-5, 6-4 in a late-night, five-hour match at Flushing Meadows. He will face Quentin Halys in the second round.
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The time the match ended: 1:55 a.m. local time.
Had Zverev lost, it would have been the sixth time of the Open Era that a No. 1 seed fell in the first round of a major and the first time in more than two decades. The current list: 1971 US Open (John Newcombe), 1990 French Open (Stefan Edberg), 1990 US Open (Edberg), 2002 Australian Open (Lleyton Hewitt) and 2003 Wimbledon (Hewitt).
It was a relatively straightforward first set, with Zverev displaying the form that saw him win Roland-Garros and reach the Wimbledon final this summer. Big first serve. Big second serve. Firm and methodical groundstrokes. It’s a hard combination to overcome, and Sonego responded with riskier shots and more trips to the net.
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Sonego was redlining: showcasing a higher tolerance for risk against an elite opponent because the usual plan has little hope for success. If it works, you have a match. If it doesn’t, you lose by a little more.
For 2 1/2 sets, it worked. Some down-the-line groundstrokes went wide. Some trips to the net resulted in an impossible ball to play. But the winners outpaced the unforced errors for three sets, and it was nearly enough.
There was plenty of nonsense along the way, with Zverev pulled into the kind of match he rarely enjoys.
That aggression saw Sonego only two points from winning the match in four sets, with Zverev serving, but the physical toll of the Italian’s all-court play started adding up. Zverev held serve, then immediately broke Sonego to take control of the set and the match.
An early break in the fifth set gave Zverev a comfortable ride to safety.
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The numbers from the match won’t be encouraging for Zverev, who converted on only 5-of-22 break points and committed nearly as many unforced errors (39) as Sonego (43). That’s reason for concern given his early exits at his two previous tournaments in Toronto and Cincinnati.
It was already shaping up to be a chaotic US Open. Jannik Sinner withdrew from the tournament. Novak Djokovic went down in similarly shocking fashion on Sunday. We have no idea if Carlos Alcaraz’s wrist and body are ready for a seven-match, five-set tournament after a 4½ month layoff.
Outside of Alcaraz and Zverev, the only other player left in the entire field with a Grand Slam singles title to his name is Daniil Medvedev.
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It’s an environment similar to the one in which Zverev won his Roland-Garros title earlier this year. Once again, he stands to benefit, especially with Alcaraz on the other side of the bracket. If Tuesday is any judge, it won’t be as straightforward as it was in Paris.