French Open: Mischa Zverev eliminated after hard fight against Kevin Anderson

Mischa Zverev has lost in the third round of the French Open. The German lost against the South African Kevin Anderson 1:6, 7:6(3), 3:6, 6:7(4) and thus missed his first round of 16 at the French Open.

Zverev had a bad start in the duel with the 2017 US Open finalist, but Sascha’s older brother had to give up his first service game and was quickly trailing 3-0. Another loss of serve at 1:5 sealed his fate in set one.

A little later, however, Anderson allowed several opportunities that Zverev knew how to take advantage of. Only in the middle of the set he had to overcome a tricky situation and two break balls against him, but played into a tiebreak, which he won quite clearly 7:3.

But in sets three and four the number six of the tournament took command again, secured the next round with a break and the fourth in the tiebreak.

Zverev could not take the serve off his opponent, who served 16 aces and won 85 percent of the points on the first serve. If they had won, the Zverevs would have been the third pair of brothers in the last 16 rounds of a Grand Slam tournament.

Despite the defeat, Zverev should be satisfied. Up to the current edition he could not win a single main round match at Roland Garros, which he managed to do twice this year against Florian Mayer (1st round) and Sergiy Stakhovsky (2nd round).