HAMBURG: Roared on by Hamburg fans, defending champion Alexander Zverev battled through to the quarter-finals Thursday with a 4-6, 6-2, 7-5 victory over Frenchman Hugo Gaston. Zverev, who is recovering from a knee injury he suffered at Wimbledon, covered the court impressively despite Gaston’s frequent drop shots.
Gaston took the first set after a 30-ball rally, which Zverev believed should have been halted for a double bounce. Zverev bounced back, breaking in the next game to take the second set. The decider featured five breaks of serve, but Zverev took the last to lead 6-5 and held serve to 15 to seal the victory.
In the quarter-finals, Zverev will face Chinese eighth seed Zhang Zhizhen, who defeated Flavio Cobolli 6-1, 7-6 (7/5).
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French fifth seed Arthur Fils also advanced, beating Serb Laslo Djere, last year’s losing finalist, 7-6 (7/3), 6-2. Fils, who made the semi-finals in Hamburg a year ago, reached his sixth tour-level quarter-final this season. This consistency has placed the 20-year-old at the top of the rankings in the ATP’s ‘Race to Jeddah’, where the Next Generation under-21 finals will be played in December. Fils has reached just one final, which he won on clay in Lyon in May 2023.
“When I’m practising super hard like I’m doing, of course, I am able to show a great level and great fitness for a few hours,” said Fils. “If a guy wants to beat me, it has to be tough. I am not going to let the match go.”
Fils will face second seed Holger Rune, who beat Marco Trungelliti 6-4, 6-3 in 80 minutes. Rune said he had tried to turn his round of 16 straight-sets loss to Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon into motivation.
“It’s been very intense since Wimbledon. I only had one day off, actually,” said Rune on court. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to rest, I want to go straight back to practice,’ because I was very disappointed. I went straight back to work on the things that needed to be done, and now I have the chance to train those things in matches.”
