By Richard Pagliaro | Thursday, November 2, 2023
Stefanos Tsitsipas scored a 7-6(2), 6-4 victory over Alexander Zverev to earn his 50th win of the season and advance to the Paris quarterfinals.
Photo credit: Aurelien Meunier/Getty
Landing a laser serve, Stefanos Tsitsipas continued his winning path in Paris—and secured his spot in Turin.
Tsitsipas slashed his 10th ace to seal his 7-6(2), 6-4 victory over Alexander Zverev advancing to the Rolex Paris Masters quarterfinals and booking his ticket to Turin for the ATP Finals in the process.
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It is Tsitsipas’ 50th win of the season—the fourth time in five years he’s won 50 or more matches—and sends him into his 10th quarterfinal of the season.
Carrying an ignominious 0-6 record vs. Top 10 opponents in 2023 into this match, Tsitsipas torched 37 winners to score his first Top 10 win since he defeated No. 5 Daniil Medvedev in round-robin play at the 2023 ATP Finals in Turin last November.
The win powers Tsitsipas into a quarterfinal vs. Karen Khachanov.
Khachanov won 46 of 51 first-serve points and saved five of six break points defeating qualifier Roman Safiullin 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 to reach his ninth quarterfinal of the season.
The 25-year-old Tsitsipas is 6-1 vs. Khachanov with the Russians’ lone win coming in their last meeting in Miami last March.
Today, Tsitsipas played pristine tennis committing just two unforced errors and mixing his slice backhand with heavy forehands building a 5-3 lead.
Serving for the set in the ninth game, the Greek felt the pressure in a jittery five unforced error game. Tsitsipas squandered two match points missing a pair of forehands. Sailing a backhand to face break point, Tsitsipas pasted a backhand into net gifting wrapping the break back to Zverev.
A fired-up Zverev thumped his third ace to level after 10 games. Zverev aced out the 12th game to forced the tiebreaker.
Exhorted on by father and coach Apostolos, who was chattering motivational chants between points, Tsitsipas hit two aces in building a 3-1 tiebreaker lead.
Tsitsipas cranked a serve down the T to go up 6-2.
On his third match point, Tsitsipas slid his third ace of the tiebreaker, and seventh of the set, to seal it in 73 minutes.
Trying to tame his forehand against Tsitsipas’ attack, Zverev looped a forehand long to drop serve at the start of the second set.
Rapping his Head racquet off quads to spark life into his legs, Zverev rallied from 15-30 down holding for 3-4.
Zverev took a 15-30 lead on the Greek’s serve in the following game, but Tsitsipas landed a series of crackling first serves hammering his way through trouble to hold for 5-3.
Facing match point, Zverev cranked a crosscourt backhand winner to save it in the ninth game. Tsitsipas whipped a short-angled crosscourt forehand winner for a second match point only to see Zverev erase it with a serve winner.
Standing up to stress, Zverev fired his fifth ace out wide holding for 4-5 after one hour, 55 minutes of play.
Tsitsipas curled a crosscourt forehand winner for a third match point and pumped his 10th ace to close in two hours.
The seventh-seeded Tsitsipas beat Zverev for the ninth time in 13 meetings.
Earlier, Hubert Hurkacz flowed through the final 10 consecutive points wrapping a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Argentinean Francisco Cerundolo.
Continuing his hunt for a spot in Turin, the 11th-ranked Hurkacz has won 15 of his last 17 Masters 1000 matches.
Shanghai champion Hurkacz meets good buddy and nemesis Grigor Dimitrov for a semifinal spot.
Former world No. 3 Dimitrov opened today’s play on Court Central sweeping Alexander Bublik 6-2, 6-2.
Dimitrov broke Bublik five times and won 11 of 15 points played on the Antwerp champion’s second serve to back up his sixth Top 10 win of the season over world No. 3 Daniil Medvedev on Wednesday.
The 17th-ranked Dimitrov advanced to his ninth quarterfinal of the season. Dimitrov is 3-0 lifetime vs. Hurkacz with two of the three wins decided in third-set tiebreakers. Overall, four of the eight sets they’ve played have gone to tiebreakers.