Stefanos Tsitspas Rallies Past Defending Champ Alexander Zverev, Kevin Anderson Also Reaches Semis at Rogers Cup

(August 10, 2018) TORONTO – The Rogers Cup in Toronto has been filled with intrigue over many of the brightest young stars of men’s tennis, and Stefanos Tsitsipas has lasted the longest to become the most fascinating story from the tournament. He  saved two match points in defeating Alexander Zverev Friday afternoon 3-6, 7-6(11), 6-4 to reach his first ever Masters semifinal.

The first half of the match varied wildly from the second half, in that Zverev was in complete control and looked poised to advance easily, up a set and a break at 6-2, 5-2. However, the young Tsitsipas, who turns 20 on Sunday, started to become more comfortable hitting his forehand with more depth and pace and quickly found himself winning the majority of long rallies. He was able to break back and eventually win the set in a long tiebreak that took nearly 20 minutes.

After the match, Zverev felt he struggled for most of the match, and the quality of the match overall was poor. “He started putting some balls into the court. I think before he was playing really bad. And I actually thought I was playing bad the whole match. It wasn’t a good match.”

The young German was clearly frustrated he wasn’t able to put away the match in straight sets, and feel he could have even won a third set had they been playing in a best of five format. “To be honest, we played three sets, and all three sets should have been three, three, and three. If we would have played best of five, that’s what the score should have been.”

Tsitsipas responded to what Zverev said in agreement that the level of the match was not always high, but otherwise wasn’t bothered. “Yeah, I heard that.

“The level of tennis today, in my opinion, was not the highest. It was all right. People seemed to love it, love the show and everything.”

Otherwise, the young Greek was thrilled with his performance and his performance in the tournament overall, having defeated three top 10 players in consecutive matches. “Achieving such things makes me feel nice. You know, I’m very proud of who I am and at such age to do this kind of results, which I never expected. I always thought it’s going to be take more years for this to happen.“

Earlier in the day, Kevin Anderson defeated Grigor Dimitrov 6-2, 6-2 in what was a much more straight forward and one sided match. “I thought I executed really well,” said Anderson. And, of course, getting off the court, you know, pretty comfortably definitely is a really good feeling.

Both players played each other in the exact same stage of the same tournament in 2014 in what was a grueling, three hour match. However, that was not the case today as Anderson showed how much he has improved, particularly from the baseline and was able to win easily.

“But I’m really excited about the way I’m playing. I’m incredibly motivated to keep working hard, keep pushing myself. I know that there’s a lot of, you know, goals that I set for myself that I haven’t achieved yet. I feel like I’ve done a good job through my career of looking ahead and staying motivated, always believing that I can do better.”

Anderson and Tsitsipas are scheduled to play their semifinal on Saturday at 3pm Eastern in Toronto.

Brodie Widdifield is covering the Rogers Cup in Toronto for Tennis Panorama News, follow him on Twitter at @MindTheRacket.