NEW YORK — Alexander Zverev played the 2020 US Open final in an empty stadium and lost it to Dominic Thiem from two sets up. He plays his second on Sunday at 1 p.m. CT on ABC, against Ben Shelton, in a sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Zverev beat Karen Khachanov 6-3, 7-6 (9-7), 7-6 (8-6) on Friday to get there. It is his third consecutive Grand Slam final this year and the sixth of his career, and he is 1-4 in major finals.
Six years and a lot of big matches sit between the two, and Zverev was a young and inexperienced player the first time.
“I’ve played in a lot of other finals. I played a lot of big matches since then. Back then, of course, it was my first Grand Slam final. I was inexperienced. I was still a young guy, I would say,” Zverev said. “Everything is different. And I am pretty sure that the atmosphere is going to be very, very different on Sunday as well. I think it’s going to be a fantastic feeling playing a final in a sold-out Arthur Ashe and not in an empty one.”
Asked whether 2020 left scar tissue, Zverev tied the answer to a date in June.
“It did until I won in Paris. I think there was question marks, there was doubts whether I was ever going to win one, for sure. I talked about it quite openly before, but now that I’ve won one, it’s okay,” Zverev explained.
Zverev won Roland Garros in June for his first major and lost the Wimbledon final to Jannik Sinner. He is 24-2 in Grand Slam matches this season and lost in the Australian Open semifinals in January.
Alexander Zverev On A Tournament That Started Badly
Zverev needed five sets in each of his first two rounds, against Lorenzo Sonego and Quentin Halys, and spent close to nine and a half hours on court doing it. He is the first man seeded No. 1 at a major to play five-setters in each of his first two rounds. He has won 13 consecutive sets since.
The 2020 run was different, Zverev says, because he never played well at any point in it and reached the final anyway.
“When I made the final here in 2020, I didn’t play well, but I didn’t play well the entire tournament. That never changed, funny enough, and I made it to the final and I was two points away from winning,” Zverev said. “But I think the improvement has been quite dramatic for me. I was like, well, this is pointless because I’m not going to do anything here. And here I am sitting and preparing for Sunday final.”
“Things like that can happen in sports and tennis in general. Things can change very quickly for the positive or negative. And for me, luckily, it was for the positive,” Zverev continued.
Speaking in German later in the same availability, Zverev said he had learned in the locker room minutes earlier that he had been one service game away from playing all four Grand Slam finals in 2026, and called that slightly bitter. He also said the balls in New York remain hideous to him and extremely difficult to control, and that playing tennis here is a different thing from Paris or Wimbledon for that reason.
Alexander Zverev On 24,000 People Against Him
Zverev will be the road player Sunday. He said he has spent more than 10 years playing in stadiums that were against him, because the tour’s big tournaments are held in countries other than Germany, and that it does not bother him.
“I enjoy these kind of atmospheres. I played a lot of French guys in France. I think the most hostile crowd, if you call it that, is when you’re playing a Frenchman in Paris Bercy back in the day. That was quite intense, and I always enjoyed those,” Zverev said. “For me, a loud and energetic crowd is always great, as long as they’re fair, as long as they don’t interrupt in the middle of points.”
Zverev also said the ball bouncing before his serves has increased this tournament without his knowing why, and that he had seen a statistic putting the total at roughly 12,000.
“I’m not doing it on purpose. I just saw the stat. I bounced it 12,000 times or something like that. That’s quite funny,” Zverev detailed. “I’m not counting in my head. I’m not getting to a certain number or anything like that. I don’t know why it increased so much.”
Zverev is 34-10 in his US Open career and leads Shelton 5-0.
