Alexander Zverev was two points from losing to Lorenzo Sonego in the US Open first round on Tuesday night, serving at 4-5, 30-30 in the fourth set. He held and then he broke for 6-5, served out the set, and eventually came through 6-4, 3-6, 6-7(7), 7-5, 6-4 on Arthur Ashe Stadium in four hours and 53 minutes.
Sonego is ranked 89th and had lost all six previous meetings with Zverev. He came into the match 1-9 against top-10 men at the majors and has never gone past the second round in New York. For three sets none of that was visible. He took the riskier ball, came forward far more often than the matchup invited, and covered enough ground behind the baseline to turn what should have been Zverev winners into one more shot to hit.
One number holds the whole night: Zverev finished five for 22 on break points. He had looks in Sonego’s service games through most of the middle sets and could not take them, and Sonego kept finding a first serve at the moment the game turned. The third set was where it nearly became something else. Sonego served for it at 5-4 and Zverev broke him. In the tiebreak Zverev hit consecutive serves at 133 mph and 141 mph to move ahead 7-6 and hold a set point. Sonego took the next two points. Zverev double-faulted on the one after that, and the set went 9-7.
Zverev broke for 3-2 in the fourth. Sonego broke straight back in the following game, running corner to corner to do it, and served himself into a 5-4 lead. That produced the two points at 30-30 on the Zverev serve. Had they gone the other way, this would have been the first major since Ivo Karlovic beat Lleyton Hewitt at Wimbledon in 2003 in which the men’s top seed lost his opening match. At the US Open it has not happened since Stefan Edberg lost to Alexander Volkov in 1990.
Sonego had his hand or wrist looked at before the fifth set and appeared fine when play resumed. Zverev broke for 3-2 and never handed the lead back, finishing shortly before 2 a.m. “I’m happy that I won this kind of battle,” Zverev said, describing it as the match he needed after struggling, by his own account, at his previous two tournaments. He also called it the longest first-round match of his life.
He is at the head of this draw only because Jannik Sinner withdrew from New York with a right knee injury. Zverev won Roland Garros in June for his first major, lost the Wimbledon final to Sinner, and was the runner-up here in 2020. The play sheet he inherited has been thinning since it was made: Novak Djokovic went out in the first round and Arthur Fils, the Cincinnati Open champion, followed him.
Zverev plays Quentin Halys in the second round. Sonego leaves with a first-round loss and the clearest evidence in a while that the number 89 beside his name is a poor guide to what he can still do to a top seed after midnight.
