WHAT HAPPENED: In front of a raucous crowd inside Louis Armstrong Stadium, Alexander Zverev recovered from scratchy play in the first set and won 29 first-serve points in a row to end Brandon Nakashima's dream run, defeating the American, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, to advance to the US Open quarterfinals for the fourth time.
“I was extremely defensive in the beginning of the match, but Brandon used that very well, played an awesome set, and I knew that I had to step up my game,” Zverev said after the battle. “I had to take the ball on the rise a bit more and play more aggressive. I did well today. I’m happy about it, and I’m happy to be back in the quarterfinals.”
Coming into the match, both had displayed a great deal of resilience in the first week of the tournament. Nakashima showed incredible fight in the third round, erasing a 0-4 game deficit in the fourth set to overcome one of the most in-form players, 2024 Wimbledon semifinalist and Paris Olympics bronze medalist Lorenzo Musetti, to advance in four. Zverev, too, put in the hard yards in his third-round match against Tomas Martin Etcheverry, coming back from a set and a break down to earn his Round of 16 berth.
This matchup featured two players with big, accurate serves and big, accurate backhands, and very little separated the pair at the outset. Zverev was able to better connect on his returns and seemed to make more inroads on his opponent’s serve, but the German also committed more errors at inopportune times.
As can be expected from any Zverev match, the pair played a series of extended rallies down the stretch and stayed on serve until 4-3, when Zverev double faulted and hit a shot into the net to give his young challenger the break. Nakashima then went down 0-30 as he served for it, and Zverev had an opportunity to earn three chances to break back with an overhead—which he promptly dumped into the net.
It turned out to foreshadow the rest of the game. Zverev would eventually earn four chances to get back on serve—and each time he would not be able to convert. Nakashima took the first set on his second opportunity, despite struggling the entire game with his first serve.
In the early stages of the second, Zverev hunkered down, cleaned up the errors, took the ball earlier and really committed to extending the rallies, his trademark. He got his reward almost immediately, breaking Nakashima in the second game as the American’s first-serve percentage dropped drastically and he committed too many unforced errors. From there, Nakashima began to misfire and he quickly found himself down a double break.
There would be no comeback this time, however. For one, Zverev was just too strong on serve to let Nakashima into his service games—remarkably, he’d end up winning all 13 of his first serve points, and dropped just three serve points total throughout the set. He evened up the scoreline in a tidy 38 minutes, winning after Nakashima hit his ninth unforced error of the set.
The third set operated in much the same fashion. Zverev broke early and never let Nakashima find a foothold. Incredibly again, he held all of his 12 first service points en route to claiming it 6-2.
The fourth at least broke up the same pattern of the previous two: Zverev’s streak of first serve points won finally came to an end at 29, and Nakashima fought off two break points in the first game to avoid the immediate scoreline deficit. However, he could not escape the same fate the next time he stepped to the line to serve. Zverev broke, and then broke again, to take the match and advance.
WHAT IT MEANS: Zverev will next face Taylor Fritz in a rematch of their fourth-round battle at Wimbledon earlier this summer. Fritz won that encounter, but Zverev leads their head-to-head overall 5-4.
“[The Wimbledon match] was an amazing match. [Taylor] played an amazing tournament at Wimbledon, for sure,” Zverev said. “I’m expecting a tough battle. Every time I play Taylor, it’s a tough battle, so I’m expecting nothing less, and hopefully it will be entertaining.”
MATCH POINT: Zverev’s serve was obviously crackling, but his net game was also pretty dominant. He won 20 of 25 of those points over the course of the match.
