Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev will meet in the final of Roland Garros 2024.
Photo: EFE Agencies – AFP
The year in which Rafa Nadal fell in the first phase and Novak Djokovic had to leave injured, Roland Garros will experience an unprecedented final on Sunday between two players who reached the last step for the first time, the Spanish Carlos Alcaraz and the German Alexander Zverev.
It will be a duel between two tennis players from different generations and unequal careers. The 27-year-old German, number 4 in the ranking, is seeking his first Grand Slam crown while the Spaniard, 21 and number 3 in the world, has already won two.
Alcaraz reached his first final in Paris after defeating the Italian Jannik Sinner, virtual number 1 in the world, in an agonizing match, 2-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 and 6-3, a duel full of tension and emotions between two rivals who know each other well and who played gripped by everything that was at stake.
The battle was vibrant, full of epic, because neither of the two tennis players was able to display the level that has placed them at the top of the ranking, but the Spaniard showed more endurance, knew how to stay afloat in the worst moments and reach further. strong in the final stretch, where he finished off the Italian.
It spoiled the Italian party
A blemish for his country at Roland Garros in which the men’s singles team will be the only one without Italian representation after the defeat of the winner of the last Australian Open.
Jasmine Paolini will play the final this Saturday against the Polish Iga Swiatek and on Sunday, together with Sara Errani, the doubles final, while Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori will play the men’s doubles.
Alcaraz became the youngest tennis player to reach a Grand Slam final on all three surfaces, having won the 2022 US Open and last year’s Wimbledon. In addition, he is the second youngest finalist in Paris behind Nadal.
But the Spaniard was particularly proud of having known how to overcome the tension that last year in that same phase against the Serbian Novak Djokovic caused cramps that prevented him from competing.
“I am happy to have overcome this complex situation based on other similar ones that I experienced in the past and to see that I have learned from them how to deal with those moments. I have been mentally strong, I have not left at any point in the game, it is a pride for me not to have stumbled over the same stone,” he said.
It was his fifth victory in nine duels against Sinner, the second this year after the Indian Wells semifinal, in which he also overturned a very bad first set.
His rival will be the fittest tennis player on the circuit, Zverev, who chained a twelfth consecutive victory to reach his first final in Paris, after three failed semi-finals, his second in a Grand Slam after the 2020 US Open, which lost to Austrian Dominic Thiem.
“Then I wasn’t mature, I wasn’t prepared,” said the 27-year-old German, who defeated Norwegian Casper Ruud 2-6, 6-2, 6-4 and 6-2, who defeated him in the semifinals last year. on the way to their second consecutive final.
Zverev thus becomes the second German to play in a Roland Garros final, after the one Michael Stich lost in 1996 against the Russian Evgeny Kafelnikof.
The German finally managed to reach the final coinciding with other good news for him, that the process for assaulting a former partner in his country is closed, after having reached an agreement between the parties.
The world number 4 is one of the few tennis players who has a favorable balance of duels with Alcaraz. They have met nine times, with five wins for the German who, however, bowed in the last one, in the quarterfinals of the Masters 1,000 in Indian Wells four months ago.
But at the Australian Open it was Zverev who won in four sets also in the quarterfinals, as well as at Roland Garros in 2022, the only duel in this tournament.
