Two things that stood out in Daniil Medvedev's SF win over Alexander Zverev at China Open
Second seed Daniil Medvedev of Russia beat eighth seed Alexander Zverev of Germany 6-4 6-3 in the semifinal of the China Open in Beijing on Monday, October 3. The match lasted almost two hours as the 27-year-old Russian coasted to a victory.
With the win, Medvedev improved his head-to-head record against Zverev to 10-7 and has won nine of their last 11 meetings. He will face Jannik Sinner of Italy, who beat top seed Carlos Alcaraz in the other semifinal of the day. Medvedev will start as the slight favorite in the match, but Sinner should be very confident after his win.
On that note, let us take a look at the two things that stood out in the match between Medvedev and Zverev:
#1. Medvedev's passes were too good for Zverev:
Zverev found it difficult to hit through Medvedev even on a reasonably fast surface because of the Russian's brilliant court-coverage. There were a lot of crosscourt backhand exchanges between the two, with both of them occasionally pulling the trigger to go down-the-line. However, they still found it difficult to hit winners that way, as both of them are swift movers on a tennis court.
This forced Zverev to rush the net often in order to put pressure on the Russian. However, Medvedev then came up with a few wonderful passing shots to stun the big German. A couple of down-the-line passing shots that he played off his forehand were absolutely top-notch.
The Russian broke Zverev in the 10th game of the first set to win it and thereby take a vital 1-0 lead. Zverev was always going to find it difficult to win two successive sets against the Russian on a fast hard court.
#2. Zverev struggled off his second serve:
As good as Zverev's first serve is, his second serve is not of the same standard and that was evident once again in the match against Medvedev. The German struggled to win points on his second delivery, as Medvedev put a lot of pressure on it.
The German was able to win only 43% of the points on his second serve, while Medvedev managed a far superior 88%. Zverev failed to break Medvedev even once in the match, as the latter converted two of the four break point opportunities that came his way.
Medvedev was able to break Zverev once in the second set, too, thereby securing his well-deserved win and setting up the summit clash with Sinner.