Alexander Zverev has another trophy in his cabinet after surviving a really close match against Roman Safiullin at the 2023 Chengdu Open.
Zverev won his first trophy this year at the Hamburg Open, and he's now up to two ATP titles in 2023. The German put together an amazing week in Chengdu using the rather fast conditions to his favour and the same thing happened in the final.
Roman Safiullin benefitted from the same conditions because his style of play is quite similar. He, too, has an incredible serve and loves to play attacking from the baseline, which gave Zverev quite some trouble in this one.
Neither player found a breakthrough in the opening set, even though Zverev had several set points. He missed out on that and then dropped the opening set in the tiebreak, which was annoying, mainly cause he played really well. The problem was that he didn't in the most crucial moments, and he paid the price for it.
The second set was very similar as both dominated on the serve, but they also traded early breaks in this one. Zverev was actually down 0-2 but battled back to remain in the match, and that proved crucial. He played better as the match progressed and ultimately got the second set in the tiebreak 7-5.
Safiullin heavily regressed in the final set, which isn't unheard of. He tends to do that often when things go badly, and it mostly happened because his serve went missing. He didn't hit it at a high percentage anymore, giving Zverev more openings, which he used.
In the end, Zverev secured the trophy after a 3-hour battle, with the final score being 6-7(2) 7-6(5) 6-3. He had ten aces and blasted 25 winners, keeping the unforced errors at a reasonable amount of 9. An important win in the battle for the ATP Finals.
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