Alexander Zverev proved not only his strength in playing but also in his nerves in his opening victory against Marin Cilic at the ATP Finals in London.
Alexander Zverev had a clear resolution for this Monday at the ATP World Championship in London. “Don’t lose, start the tournament with a positive note”, that was the youngest participant’s intention for the duel with the Croatian Marin Cilic. But precisely because Zverev wanted to avoid this false start at all costs, he started the game hypernervously – and when he looked at the scoreboard after half an hour, there shimmered a 2:5 intermediate score.
There was a red alert, the first defeat against Cilic after five important victories against him. But when Zverev distinguished one at his first appearance in the 2018 final, it was fighting power, resistance and nerve power. Zverev caught up game after game, he won the first set in the tiebreak with 7:5. And because he then kept a cool head in the second set in the decisive lucky lottery, he finally scored a valuable 7:6 (5), 7:6 (1) victory for himself.
“It was a work victory. If it mattered, I was right there,” Zverev said afterwards.
Now it’s time for the 21-year-old to play against the winner of the second Monday match between the world number one Novak Djokovic and the American service cannon John Isner in the second group match on Wednesday. No matter who’s facing him: Zverev will have to improve his game to reach the possibly already decisive second preliminary round success – and thus come very close to qualifying for the semi-finals.
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“I know that I still have potential upstairs. But victory is immensely important. It gives a boost to self-confidence,” said Zverev. Fortunately, the right shoulder game attacked in Paris no longer worried the German international. It got “better and better, today everything was actually already perfectly okay”, said Zverev. Zverev also had an involuntary helper at the start of this tournament – and that was none other than Cilic, his counterpart. In two crucial moments of the game, the Croatian waived an objection and the video check of a referee verdict.
If Cilic had taken the so-called “challenge”, this became clear later when viewing the television pictures, he would have been right in both cases. In the first set, the failures cost him the service game to 4:5. And in the second set, a point in the nervous game of the tiebreak. Zverev found his game better after the completely sleepy opening phase, but he could not really convince in his first appearance in the second World Cup year.
“The decisive thing is victory. He counts, nothing else,” he said later in a TV conversation. Like other players, Zverev was somewhat irritated by the dull, low-dynamic hall floor. The day before Roger Federer had already complained about the “missing speed” in his defeat at the opening match against Kei Nishikori from Japan; at the previous indoor tournaments the speed had been consistently faster. Zverev could only partly do something with this statement, the flat balls from Cilic would have picked up a lot of speed anyway.
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For Zverev it was the sixth victory in a row against Cilic. And for him, for Cilic, it was the last sad proof that he and this tournament are not exactly connected by an intimate relationship. His record in London after the bankruptcy against Zverev is now: One win, nine defeats.