Zverev Between Two Storms: Two Five-Setters, One Sleepless Night and a US Open Semifinal

The clock in Alexander Zverev's hotel room read 3:30 a.m. and the television was still on. On screen, Ben Shelton had just closed out a fifth-set tiebreak at 10-7 against Carlos Alcaraz, ending the quarterfinal at 6-7(5), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6(10-7). The German sat through the final ball. The next morning he slept until 1 p.m., then went out to practise.

After nearly four decades in this trade, I have sat in enough stands and press rooms to separate two kinds of players: those who watch a match for entertainment, and those who watch it to work. Zverev belongs to the second group. He did not stay up out of curiosity. He stayed up to measure how fast the Flushing Meadows court is running this year, and which of the men left in the draw can exploit it.

Zverev entered the US Open as the top seed, ranked No. 2 in the PIF ATP Rankings, carrying the first Grand Slam title of his career, won at Roland Garros this season. At 29 he is no longer the prodigy people projected. He is a champion at a late peak. This is his third US Open semifinal, and he stopped at that stage on both previous occasions.

The road to this semifinal has not been smooth. Zverev's first two matches both ran to a fifth set. He survived the opening rounds through long contests, then beat Botic van de Zandschulp in the quarterfinal to book a semifinal against Karen Khachanov. In the other half of the draw, Shelton meets Frances Tiafoe in an all-American semifinal.

The most striking thing about this picture is how hard it is to read in the conventional way. Zverev is the only major champion left in the tournament, after Shelton removed Alcaraz in the quarterfinal. That status is usually described as an advantage. I am not sure it is one.

Two five-setters in the opening rounds are a more important data point than any serve statistic we do not have. For a player close to 1.98 metres whose game is built on the serve and a first-strike forehand, the physical cost is not spread evenly. The serve stays live longest, even when the legs have gone heavy. What collapses first is movement into the ball and the quality of the return games. Stretching two opening matches to five sets means Zverev has spent precisely the resource he cannot save.

The crux is that a big server always loses the movement component first, and that is exactly the component Khachanov will attack.

Khachanov is the worst kind of opponent for that condition. The Russian hits heavy, flat, unadorned, and lives by extending rallies from the back of the court. He does not win with shots that lift a stadium to its feet. He wins by forcing his opponent to hit one more ball, and then one more. From the U21 stands, I learned that the biggest trend always wears the most modest shirt, and Khachanov at 30 is the embodiment of the player the media does not want to make room for.

Shelton's win over Alcaraz gives us another signal about the court this year. The scoreline 6-7(5), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6(10-7) describes a contest entirely governed by serving and nerve at the decisive moments. Two sets ended in tiebreaks, the fifth stretching to 10-7. Shelton is a left-hander with a big serve and a flat forehand. Alcaraz is an all-court player with variation. On a fast hard court, flat power can push variation into a passive position, something anyone who followed the Federer, Nadal and Djokovic era has already recognised.

The gap between a good run and a Grand Slam title usually sits in reading a scoreboard at the right moment. A media failure in 2026 taught me this: data needs a heart to become a story. The scoreline 6-7(5), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6(10-7) does not tell you what Shelton felt stepping up to serve at 9-7 in the deciding tiebreak. But it tells you that in that match both men chose to end points early, and the winner was the one who served better at the exact moment.

For Zverev, the lesson from that quarterfinal carries a double warning. First, the court is rewarding the serve-plus-first-strike pattern, and that is his advantage. Second, this kind of match also rewards anyone willing to extend every point, and that is Khachanov's advantage if Zverev has already burned his reserve.

The counter-intuitive point lies elsewhere. Staying awake until 3:30 a.m. is not the problem, because one sleepless night does not dismantle a professional athlete's base. The problem is the atmosphere his match is about to be played in. The other semifinal has Shelton against Tiafoe, two Americans, on the main court in prime time. That is the absolute media centre of gravity. Zverev, who said that match would be a fun semifinal between two Americans, has deliberately pushed attention to the opposite half. That releases him from pressure, and it also removes the energy a New York crowd supplies in the biggest matches.

One more detail few noticed: is sleeping until 1 p.m. alarming? In the workload-tracking system I have maintained since the 2026 shutdown, elite players tend to shift their sleep rhythm late during tournament weeks, because the schedule runs into the night. The injury-tracking system was born in that period, but it lives for ordinary days, and an ordinary day for a player at the US Open begins mid-morning, not at dawn.

What I have never seen in my own data is a 29-year-old whose game depends on back-court movement playing three consecutive long matches at a hard-court Grand Slam without damage. At this age the peak has passed its summit and the emphasis shifts to load management. Zverev has managed it somehow to still be standing in the semifinal. Khachanov will test how much is left.

This semifinal will not be decided by the serve, even though that is Zverev's primary weapon. It will be decided in the third and fourth return games of each set, when the legs must work harder than the head wants. Whoever reads that signal first will hold the match. For a writer, every analysis remains a spreadsheet filled in by moments you can only see from a seat in the stands, in the right place, at the right time.