Four hours had been played in this first match of the day in the John Cain Arena when Alexander Zverev was already thinking about the next Quantas flight, as he admitted: “Home via Dubai.” Early departure from this tournament. With the last bit of luck in the tiebreak, he saved himself into the third round of the Australian Open after a five-set win against the aggressive Slovakian qualifier Lukas Klein, 7:5, 3:6, 4:6, 7:6 (5), 7 :6 (7). But Zverev admitted: the outcome of the match was out of his hands.
It was a tough duel, and initially there was little to suggest the drama that would come later. Zverev, 26, is an Olympic champion, two-time winner of the ATP Finals and number six in the world. And he has already reached the semi-finals of this first Grand Slam tournament of 2020, which he lost to Dominik Thiem. He has known the blue places on the Yarra River for ten years: this is his territory. His opponent Lukas Klein, 25, number 163 in the rankings, usually earns his money at ITF tournaments. Second category competitions. For the first time in his career, he had made it into the main field of this world-class event worth 18 million euros.
And yet Lukas Klein, intent on attack from the start, let his famous opponent run: all over the place, from left to right along the baseline; forward to the net and back again. Anyone who recognized a discrepancy in this distribution of roles was right. Alexander Zverev has played 577 matches on the professional tour in his career – Lukas Klein just thirteen, of which he lost nine.
And yet Zverev was initially not in danger. After 50 minutes he secured the first set 7:5 without clearly having taken the initiative. But this rather lethargic attitude invited the tall Slovakian to play more courageously. He switched to tennis roulette, sought his way to the net, hit the balls left and right onto the lines. At the end of the fifth set he had hit 77 winners – unreachable balls – and 80 easy errors.
In the second set he took the serve from Zverev to make it 4-2. A short while later, the roof of the arena was closed due to a brief downpour. As soon as the game resumed, Zverev lost the set.
Zverev loses the set and is on the defensive in Melbourne
He let Klein drive him meters behind the baseline – almost to the south stand. And strangely enough, he didn’t change tactics in the next three sets, never giving up his defensive position on the banks of the Yarra River.
The third set went to the Slovakian Klein. In the fourth round, Zverev was on the verge of elimination, had to fend off a break point at 4:4 and made it into the tiebreak. It was his brilliant serve, which he smashed almost flawlessly over the edge of the net, that saved him.
The pattern was repeated in the fifth round. Once again Zverev remained stubborn on the defensive. Klein distributed his winners around the court, and it went back to the tiebreak – and there, at the last minute, the qualifier from Spisska Nova Ves made one mistake too many at the net. “He would have deserved to win,” said Zverev when he still won with more luck than aggressiveness. Now he will face Alex Michelsen from the USA on Saturday.
Last year the tournament for the Olympic champion ended after the second round. At that time, however, after his serious ankle injury, he was just trying to carefully find his footing between the white lines on the rectangle. A few months earlier he was still using crutches. On Thursday, however, it was difficult to find an explanation for the strikingly weak performance – or for the reason why a world-class player of Zverev’s stature could not find any means against number 163 in the ranking.
Zverev said after his opening match on Tuesday, which he also won with some difficulty against his German colleague Dominik Koepfer (4:6, 6 :3, 7:6, 6:3). After another four and a half hours the rhythm should have been found.