1 Response to rg26zverev_cobolli

1. Voo de Mar says:

   June 7, 2026 at 8:05 pm

   Points won by each set: | 29-18, 33-35, 33-23, 38-41, 29-19 |
   Unreturned serves:
   19 % Zverev – 28 of 143
   17 % Cobolli – 27 of 155

   Zverev [3] gets the monkey off his back. He was considered to win a Slam for the first time before the US Open ’17, so he basically waited almost nine years to finally raise the trophy. In the meantime he lost all his three Slam finals as well as seven semifinals (including three that must have hurt a lot, also physically including the French Open ’22 semifinal). In the ’26 final he met a completely unexpected opponent, a talented 24-year-old Cobolli [14] who took advantage of two extremely fortunate circumstances: the main favorite in his top half of the draw – Sinner – shockingly lost in the second round, in the semifinal Cobolli could have faced so many better players than him, yet he was supposed to share the court with a fellow Italian – inferior Arnaldi – who withdrew, thus leaving Cobolli super fresh before the final. It surprised me that Cobolli didn’t give his all from the first minutes of the final being aware of his amazing luck. He lost the set 1-6, but it didn’t look so bad: Zverev got two points with net-cords, one catching the line, on the other hand Cobolli missed 4-5 balls just a few centimetres. He stayed positive and broke at 3-all in the 2nd set after 4 deuces. That moment perhaps caused some doubts in Zverev’s mind, and for another two hours or so, they looked like players from the same level which is true only on the assumption neither of them was a Slam champion before. In the 4th set Zverev came back from a break down twice, he signalised some problems with his legs, but led 6:5* and 3:1 in the tie-break. Cobolli missed a volley at *6:4 from a “9 of 10 position” but won the set anyway. His five-set record is quite modest, it was tough to predict how he would react in such a match while approaching four hours of play, the answer was: not great. He needed a toilet break before the decider, then a MTO to his sore legs. He wasted break points at 0:1 and 0:3; in the 4th game of that set he should have converted one of his three break points at several strokes during a rally. When he won a game to trail 1:4 he clenched his fist, but didn’t show anything interesting after the change of ends, and Zverev could celebrate the biggest success in his career on his back after the 4-hour 16-minute contest when Cobolli missed an overhead. “This court is so special to me in so many ways,” Zverev said during the trophy ceremony. “I have had the best moments of my life on this court and the worst moment of my life on these courts. I was playing in the corner four years ago over there with seven broken ligaments and two fractured bones. I lost a Grand Slam final here two years ago, but now, finally, it is a happy end.”

   Zverev’s route to his 25th title (first Slam):
   1 Benjamin Bonzi 6-3, 6-4, 6-2
   2 Tomas Machac 6-4, 6-2, 6-2
   3 Quentin Halys 6-4, 6-3, 5-7, 6-2
   4 Jesper de Jong 7-6(3), 6-4, 6-1
   Q Rafael Jodar 7-6(3), 6-1, 6-3
   S Jakub Mensik 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3
   W Flavio Cobolli 6-1, 4-6, 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-1

   Serve & volley: Zverev 7/9, Cobolli 8/10

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