Zverev wins French Open, his first Grand Slam title
Alexander Zverev outlasted Flavio Cobolli in a five-set thriller to claim his first Grand Slam crown after four lost major finals.
- Alexander Zverev beat Flavio Cobolli 6-1, 4-6, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-1 in the French Open final.
- The match on Court Philippe-Chatrier lasted 4 hours and 16 minutes, with Cobolli forcing a fifth set via a fourth-set tie-break.
- This is the first Grand Slam of Zverev's career, at age 29, after four lost major finals.
- Zverev is the first German man to win a Slam singles title since Boris Becker in 1996.
Somewhere in the fifth set, when the last ball dropped out of play, Alexander Zverev sank to the Philippe-Chatrier clay and buried his face in his hands. The stands were watching a man who had reached this threshold four times and walked away empty-handed each time. Not this time. After 4 hours and 16 minutes, the German finally had his Grand Slam.
The final had been billed all afternoon as wide open, and it was, just not in the way most expected. Zverev started like a freight train, taking the opening set in under half an hour, 6-1. It looked like it might be over quickly. Then Flavio Cobolli, the 24-year-old Italian in his first Grand Slam final, remembered he had nothing to lose and a chance in front of him that does not come twice.
How did Cobolli drag the match into a fifth set?
The second set went the Italian’s way, 6-4, on the back of a string of fanatical baseline defences. Zverev tightened his serve again in the third to lead two sets to one, 6-4. At that point most of the stadium saw the finish line. Cobolli did not. He played the fourth set as if it were his last, dragged it to a tie-break and was the cooler man in the shootout, 7-5. Two sets all, and a deciding fifth.
That fifth set belonged to experience. Zverev raised his serve, stopped missing off the forehand and opened a gap Cobolli could no longer close. The Italian went for one more break in the final game, but the German served it out, 6-1. The numbers tell the story of the two sets that mattered most, the first and the fifth, in which Zverev dropped just two games combined.
The statistic that changes a career
Four lost major finals carry a weight few outside tennis truly understand. Zverev had lost to Dominic Thiem, to Carlos Alcaraz, to Jannik Sinner. Each time he was close, each time he left with the same narrative about not yet being ripe for the biggest trophy. That narrative no longer holds. At 29, the German is the first from his country to win a Slam singles title since Boris Becker in 1996, and the win returned him to the top ten of the ATP rankings.
Cobolli, for his part, left as a loser who earned the respect of the entire tennis world. Only the third Italian in history to contest a Grand Slam singles final, the 24-year-old has time on his side. After the match both men said the kind of thing rarely heard in sport at this level.
“This court is special to me in so many ways, I have had the best moments of my life here, but also the worst moment of my life,” Zverev said, likely referring in part to the ankle injury he once suffered here.
“Alex, if someone asks me who deserves this title more, I always say you, it was an honour to share the court with you today,” Cobolli replied during the trophy ceremony.
The Coupe des Mousquetaires is finally in the hands of the man who waited longest for it in his generation. The question heading into the next Grand Slam is no longer whether Zverev can win a major, but how many more he can take. And what about you, do you think this is the start of a new era for German tennis or the lonely peak of one career?
