{"id":517336,"date":"2026-09-02T05:36:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=517336"},"modified":"2026-09-02T05:36:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:36:17","slug":"top-seeded-zverev-beats-sonego-after-5-sets-in-us-open-1st-round","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/top-seeded-zverev-beats-sonego-after-5-sets-in-us-open-1st-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Top-seeded Zverev beats Sonego after 5 sets in US Open 1st round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alexander Zverev got back just in time to avoid becoming the 1<sup>st<\/sup> men\u2019s top seed to lose in the 1<sup>st<\/sup> round of a Grand Slam tournament since 2003, defeating Lorenzo Sonego 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-5, 6-4 in a US Open game that finished Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>The German couldn&#8217;t cash in on repeated chances to break Lorenzo\u2019s serve for much of the game and was very close to becoming the 1st number 1-seeded man to be eliminated in his 1st Grand Slam clash since Ivo Karlovic beat Lleyton Hewitt at Wimbledon in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>The last time this happened in the major in the Big Apple was when Alexander Volkov defeated Stefan Edberg in 1990. Alexander finally broke through against his Italian opponent\u2019s serve late to be able to win in the end after almost 5 hours on the court.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNearly 5 hours for a 1<sup>st<\/sup> round, I believe this is the longest 1<sup>st<\/sup>-round game I have ever played in my career,\u201d Alexander shared after his victory. \u201cSonego played really well today and would have defeated a lot of players, without a doubt, but I\u2019m happy that I survived.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">17 &#8211; Alexander Zverev (17) has played the most five-setters in the opening week at Grand Slams of any ATP top 10 player, since the ATP rankings were first published in 1973. Attritional.<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/USOpen?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\">#USOpen<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/usopen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\">@usopen<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/atptour?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\">@atptour<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/T2Z8WmPw9M\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/T2Z8WmPw9M<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; OptaAce (@OptaAce) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/OptaAce\/status\/2095014984107598216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\">September 2, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alexander Zverev got back just in time to avoid becoming the 1st men\u2019s top seed to lose in the 1st round of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4225,"featured_media":517337,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[16760,18774],"news_category":[16714],"gn_keywords":[17870,19686],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"Alexander barely survived the 1st round in New York.","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/517336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/517336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517338,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/517336\/revisions\/517338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517336"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=517336"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=517336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}