Final: No. 5 Alexander Zverev (GER) vs. No. 2 Dominic Thiem (AUT)
Arthur Ashe Stadium, 4 p.m. ET
- Who will be the first men’s singles Grand Slam winner born in the 1990s? That’s the question that Dominic Thiem, the No. 2 seed and a veteran of three Grand Slam finals, and Alexander Zverev, seeded No. 5 and playing his first major final, will answer in Sunday’s US Open men's final. The last 63 men’s singles Grand Slam titles have been claimed by men born in the 1980s, a streak that dates all the way back to 2004 Roland Garros.
- Thiem is the favorite coming in, thanks to his 7-2 lifetime record against Zverev, but the Austrian is expecting a difficult battle from the player who stretched him to four tight sets when they met in the semifinals at the Australian Open in January. “He's a hell of a player,” Thiem told reporters after his straight-sets victory over Daniil Medvedev in the semifinals. “One of the greatest ones in the last few years. It's going to be a super difficult match.”
- Thiem is bidding to win a major singles title after dropping his first three Grand Slam finals. He lost the first two against Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros (2018, 2019) and then fell to Novak Djokovic in five sets in this year’s Australian Open final. Thiem hopes to avoid joining Ivan Lendl and Andy Murray as men’s singles players who lost each of their first four major finals. “I’m just going to go in fully focused, like in all the six previous matches,” he said. “The world continues no matter what's result is, so it's going to be fine.”
- Zverev has struggled mightily with his second serve at this year’s US Open (49 double faults through six rounds), but the 23-year-old German has battled through those rough patches to take his place in his first career Grand Slam final. He became the first player to rally from two sets down in a US Open semifinal since 2011 on Friday, when he defeated Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta. His first serve, on the other hand, has not been a problem. Zverev’s 116 aces leads all players at the 2020 US Open, and he has won 80 percent of his first-serve points. He’s also generating a lot more free points off the first serve than Thiem. Twenty-three percent of Zverev’s first serves have not come back, while just 10 percent of Thiem’s first serves have been unreturned.
- Zverev is bidding to become the first German men’s singles champion at the US Open since 1989, when Boris Becker raised the trophy. Thiem is already the first Austrian to ever reach a US Open final and he hopes to be the first man from his country to win a Grand Slam singles title since Thomas Muster won Roland Garros in 1995. No matter who comes away with the victory, this year’s US Open will crown a men’s singles Grand Slam champion not named Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic for the first time since Stan Wawrinka claimed the US Open title in 2016.
