Alexander Zverev held a match point in a second-set tiebreak on Wednesday evening in Ohio, and by the time the night was over he had lost four of the last six games and his place in the Cincinnati Open. Tommy Paul beat the top seed 4-6, 7-6(6), 6-4 to reach the quarterfinals at this tournament for the first time in his career.
The weather did as much as either player. Rain arrived at the Lindner Family Tennis Center at about 3:30 p.m. local time with Zverev about to serve at 6-4, 3-4, and the interruption ran close to 90 minutes. When the two came back out, Paul was still behind, still on serve in a set he had not yet threatened to win, and facing a man who had beaten him at the Australian Open the last time they met.
The tiebreak turned on a single ball. Zverev reached 6-5 and match point, then netted a forehand. Paul won the next point on a return that dropped to the baseline and drew another error, and from 6-6 the set was his. In the third, Zverev led 4-2 and did not win another game. Paul took the last four, breaking at 4-4 with four straight points on the German’s serve and closing out the match in five points after the changeover.
Paul’s explanation afterward was characteristically flat. Zverev, he said, “gave me a couple of looks at second serves.” The numbers back it up: Paul won 15 of 32 points returning the Zverev second serve, a shade under half, on an evening when the German also served nine double faults against 14 aces and was called for a foot fault in the deciding set.
For Zverev the loss lands awkwardly. He came to Ohio as the top seed in a draw missing both men above him — Jannik Sinner withdrew with a knee problem and Carlos Alcaraz is still working back from a wrist injury — and with the clearest run at a Masters 1000 title he has had all summer. He had also arrived on the back of a first-round exit in Montreal against Tallon Griekspoor. Victory would have made him the ninth man to reach 40 Masters 1000 quarterfinals. Instead the reigning French Open champion leaves the last significant hard-court event before New York with two matches played and eleven days to fix his form.
Paul, the 18th seed, now leads their head-to-head 3-1, all four meetings having come on hard courts. He plays Flavio Cobolli in the last eight, the Italian seventh seed having come from a set down to beat the 19-year-old Spaniard Rafael Jodar 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-3 earlier in the day.
Zverev was not the only casualty in the top half. Arthur Fils, seeded 21st, beat world No. 8 Alex de Minaur 6-3, 6-4 to reach a fifth Masters 1000 quarterfinal this season, a mark no Frenchman has reached since Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in 2012. Fils will meet Thiago Agustin Tirante, whose week continues to defy the seedings: the Argentine, who knocked out Novak Djokovic in the second round, beat 14th seed Jakub Mensik 5-7, 6-4, 6-4. Tirante is only the second active Argentine to reach a Masters 1000 quarterfinal, after Francisco Cerundolo.
The American picture is still forming. Taylor Fritz, the sixth seed, moved through with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Australian qualifier Christopher O’Connell, giving the United States two men in the quarterfinals alongside Paul. Tiafoe and Nakashima later completed the set, leaving four American men and four American women in the Cincinnati quarterfinals. Brandon Nakashima, who saved three match points against Daniil Medvedev on Tuesday, and Frances Tiafoe, the 2024 finalist here, were both still on court late Wednesday.
What that adds up to is a tournament whose seeding has largely stopped meaning anything. Ben Shelton, a Masters champion four days earlier, went out to a qualifier in the second round. Djokovic went out in the second. Medvedev went out in the third. Zverev has now gone out in the fourth, and the top half of the draw contains a 21st seed, an unseeded Argentine, an Italian seventh seed and an American who had never previously been past the last 16 here.
For Paul the timing matters more than the scalp. He has spent the season on the edge of the leading group without quite settling in it, and a deep run in Ohio would sharpen his seeding position going into a Grand Slam where the American men have a genuine, unusually wide opening. The main draw at Flushing Meadows begins on Aug. 30.
