Tsitsipas saves match points to beat Zverev in Toronto

Stefanos Tsitsipas’ best-ever run at an ATP Tour Masters event continued after he rallied to upset third-ranked Alexander Zverev 3-6 7-6(11) 6-4 and advance to the semifinals of the Rogers Cup in Toronto.

The 19-year-old Greek rising star is the youngest player to beat three top-10 players at a single tournament since Rafael Nadal at the 2006 Monte Carlo Masters.

Tsitsipas trailed defending champion Zverev 6-3 5-2 but got back on serve late in the second set, and then saved two match points in a marathon tiebreaker before forcing the decider.

“I was just walking the ball back and making him play every single ball,” Tsitsipas said of his tactics when Zverev served for the match.

The run continues for @StefTsitsipas!

Takes out defending champion Zverev 3-6 7-6(11) 6-4.#RogersCup pic.twitter.com/YPWqkYqsp0

— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) August 10, 2018

“At [5-3], he wasn’t into it. He started missing. He got tighter, I think. He understood that’s his chance to close the match. I just did things right and, yeah, I broke him.

“That’s how you break, if you play things right and you play clever. And I did that, and I was back in the match again.”

Zverev slammed his racquet to the ground in frustration after missing a cross-court backhand to lose the second set.

Tsitsipas struggled on serve in the final set, but he managed to save eight of the nine break points he faced and broke the 21-year-old German’s serve on two occasions to wrap up the victory in two hours and 27 minutes.

REPORT: Tsitsipas knocks out Djokovic in Toronto

“I was up 6-3, 5-3, serving for the match,” Zverev told atpworldtour.com.

“So it should have been a three and three match, and then I would have been [in press] about one-and-a-half hours ago.

“But now I’m going to go to Cincinnati. I’ll do everything I can to prepare myself there and play well there. But as I said, I didn’t feel the ball at all. I didn’t play well. So a lot of it didn’t depend on me.”

For Tsitsipas, who had defeated Austrian world No. 8 Dominic Thiem and 10th-ranked Serbian Novak Djokovic in the two previous rounds, it was his third straight victory over a top-10 opponent.

Before this week, he had never advanced past the second round of one of the nine Masters events.

His opponent in Saturday’s semifinals will be South African Wimbledon runner-up Kevin Anderson, the world No. 6, who brushed aside Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov 6-2 6-2 on Friday.

The other two men’s singles quarterfinals saw Russia’s Karen Khachanov beat the Netherlands’ Robin Haase 6-3 6-1, while Spanish world No. 1 Rafael Nadal will face Croatian world No. 7 Marin Cilic.