Alexander Zverev has historically performed really well at the Vienna Open, and he showed it in his opening match against Sebastian Ofner.
Despite facing a really tricky player who happens to be a native of Austria, Zverev once again proved a machine indoors. The German had a really solid Asian swing, but even so, he arrived with a three-match losing streak, which is somewhat unusual for him.
He doesn't really have many losing streaks, but the amount of tennis he played in Asia caught up with him in Tokyo, resulting in a pretty poor performance there. Today was much better as Zverev avoided the indoor trap by beating Ofner handily in two sets.
The first one was played pretty well by both players but the most important thing for Zverev was winning the set when he didn't serve all that well. His percentage wasn't that high but when he did hit his serve the point was basically over.
That's his main weapon indoors and many players struggle with it. Ofner had no solutions despite being pretty strong from the baseline with 10 winners and only 2 unforced errors. He simply rarely got a chance to really impose himself during rallies.
He tried to be a bit more daring in the second set, but it backfired heavily as he found himself down 0-4 pretty quickly. The Austrian never recovered from that, but also Zverev never gave him a chance to recover with his tremendous play. He served better this time around, and it translated into very quick and easy rallies.
The final score was 6-4 6-1 for the German, who had four aces, 16 winners, and six unforced errors. A pretty strong start for the former Vienna Open champion, who will face either Cameron Norrie or Austrian native Filip Misolic in the next round.
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