Monte Carlo (AP) – Alexander Zverev is in the round of 16 at the tennis tournament in his adopted home of Monte Carlo.
After a bye in the first round, the 24-year-old from Hamburg defeated Argentinian Federico Delbonis 6-1, 7-5 in the second round on Wednesday and still has every chance of winning the tournament in the Principality. He used his third match point to win in the evening, which cost him some effort in the second set.
Zverev: “I just want to win matches”
“Everything can’t always go perfectly in the first match. I’m glad I won. I just want to win matches,” said Olympic champion Zverev on Sky. After the surprisingly early departure of world number one Novak Djokovic, he is the highest-ranked player in the field. Djokovic had already failed the day before in the clay court tournament due to the Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.
In the fight for a place in the quarter-finals, Zverev now meets the Spaniard Pablo Carreño Busta in the Masters 1000 tournament, which is worth around 5.2 million euros. “He’s a very, very good clay court player,” said Zverev about the next opponent.
Zverev was last eliminated in Miami in the quarterfinals and suffered another disappointment on hard court in the USA. For the best German tennis player, the Montpellier final is the only final this year so far. The highlight of the clay court season is the French Open. The Grand Slam tournament in Paris begins on May 22nd.
Djokovic: “I completely ran out of gas”
For the hoped-for title chance at this tournament, Djokovic wants to get new momentum at home. After the early failure in Monte Carlo, which was rare for him, the world number one will compete in Belgrade next week. His comeback at the start of the clay court season had been sobering the day before.
“I broke down,” said the 34-year-old after the 3: 6, 7: 6 (7: 5), 1: 6 in his opening match against Spanish outsider Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in his adopted country. “I just ran out of gas completely,” said Djokovic: “If you can’t keep rallies, if you can’t feel your legs on sand, it’s an impossible mission.”
The fact that the winner of 20 Grand Slam tournaments misses match practice and had to take a forced break is because he is not vaccinated against the corona virus. He was unable to defend his title at the Australian Open at the beginning of the season because he was expelled from the country. He was also not admitted to the American tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami because of the lack of vaccination. In his first match since the end of February, the top seed played unusually incorrectly and was very vulnerable in his own service games.