Missiles in service, followed if necessary by bursts of laser shots from the baseline: Russian Daniil Medvedev won a pitched battle Sunday, November 8 against Alexander Zverev to win the Masters 1000 in Paris, his first title of the season .
The Russian, 5th in the world, who had never gone beyond the second round of the Parisian indoor tournament, won 5-7, 6-4, 6-1.
This victory will allow him to climb to 4th place in the ATP ranking on Monday, ahead of Roger Federer, and to tackle the London Masters with full confidence (November 15-22).
Much of the match was played on serve, the two men, known to have two of the biggest first balls on the circuit, multiplying the face-offs beyond 200 km / h. The first to break was Zverev who avoided the decisive game in the first set.
The German then held the shock for much of the second set, including several break points to 1-1. But the Russian’s grazing strikes gradually eroded his defense.
At 4-4, Medvedev went on 7 winning games in a row to win the second set and break away 4-0 in the deciding set. Too far for Zverev to come back.
Zverev’s troubles
Until then, the 23-year-old German had only lost once in six meetings with Medvedev (24), already in the final of a Masters 1000, that of Shanghai in 2019. The Russian then achieved an end of exceptional season (with a Homeric final at the US Open against Nadal and his first two titles in Masters 1000, Cincinnati and Shanghai). But he then missed the London Masters and started 2020 in small form.
Zverev remained on two consecutive titles in October 2020 in Cologne where two tournaments were played in two weeks, or 12 matches won consecutively, since his defeat in the 8th at Roland Garros. On Saturday, he eliminated Rafael Nadal 6-4, 7-5 in just over an hour and a half. He had never before passed the quarters at Bercy (2018).
The troubles Zverev encounters in his private life, and in particular the accusations of violence made by an ex-girlfriend whom he denies outright, do not seem to have a negative effect on his game.
At the end of the match on Sunday, he himself returned to the subject on the court, in the middle of a room in Bercy desperately empty due to the closed medical session: “A lot of people will try to wipe the smile off my face, but under my (sanitary) mask I have a big smile, I feel amazingly good on the court, the people I love are with me”, he said.
He will also be at the Masters Tournament in London alongside Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Dominic Thiem, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Andrey Rublev and Diego Schwartzman.
