Alexander Zverev is back in another Grand Slam final after shaking off a late surge from Jakub Menšík and winning their French Open semifinal 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 on Friday. The No. 2 seed broke early in the fourth set, steadied himself after a wobble in the third and closed out the 20-year-old Czech to move into his fourth major final.
That result is why readers were searching for Sascha Zverev on Friday: he has another chance at a title on one of tennis’s biggest stages, and this one came after a match that looked far less straightforward than the scoreline suggests. Menšík, the No. 26 seed from the Czech Republic, was in medical treatment early in the third set while trailing by two sets to love, then came back out and broke Zverev for the first time to lead 4-2. He even reached 5-3, 40-0 on serve and held three set points, but Zverev kept coming.
For long stretches, Menšík produced the higher peaks. If the semifinal had been decided only by the best passages of play, the Czech teenager might have walked away with it. Instead, Zverev’s level stayed more even. When Menšík surged, Zverev refused to drift far from the baseline rhythm that carried him through the first two sets, and that steady edge was enough to blunt the momentum swings.
Zverev said afterward that he still felt mostly in control at the end of the third set and believed that if he got back to creating chances and used them once or twice, he would wrest the match back. “That’s all I told myself. A five-set match is long,” he said. The point was simple, and it proved right almost immediately, because he broke Menšík at the start of the fourth set to lead 2-0 and never let the door open again.
Menšík was frank about why the German stayed so hard to dislodge. “Sascha is third in the world for a reason,” he said, adding that Zverev is the player who does not let an opponent stay long on the front foot. He pointed to Zverev’s huge serves and strong baseline game as the reasons his own bursts of momentum never lasted. Those were the details that mattered most on Friday, because they explained how a match that briefly tilted could still finish in Zverev’s hands.
The win sends Zverev into his fourth Grand Slam final, with the only missing piece now being the opponent waiting across the net. Roland Garros has already told him the harder part: even when the other player finds a higher gear, he can still stay upright long enough to finish the job.
