The fact first. Zverev beats Shelton 6-3, 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-2 in Sunday evening’s final. He breaks in the opening game of the fourth set, breaks again at 4-2, serves for the match and finishes it on his first attempt. Then he doesn’t celebrate. He stays on the baseline, because he thinks it’s 5-1.
“I thought it was 5-1. I knew I broke him twice, but I thought it was 5-1 instead of 6-2, which helped me in a way, because I didn’t really get nervous serving out the match,” he said.
That sentence is the one that interests our club league specialist (interclubs, Belgium’s weekend team league).
What he’s describing is my Sunday, exactly. In doubles nobody ever knows the score. You ask the other pair, they say 40-30, we say 30-40, we replay the point and that’s that. Except we lose the game. He wins the US Open. The difference is intention. And the strings, obviously.
On the technical side there is one point the C30.4, a club-level ranking, won’t let go of: serving for the title without knowing you’re serving for the title removes the match point, so the shaky hand, so the double fault.
My second serve at 5-4, I make it. Not every time, but I make it. Two practice sessions away, mind you. So the Zverev method goes in from the first match back: my partner calls a wrong score, I play loose, and nobody tells me the truth until after the handshake. The level in club league has gone way up, people don’t realise.
Zverev also didn’t hear the umpire call “Game, set, match”, because of the crowd noise. On the same court, in 2020, in an empty stadium, he led Dominic Thiem by two sets and lost the final.
It’s true, we checked: Tennis Majors.
