Alexander Zverev moves into the Halle quarterfinals

Football fan Alexander Zverev had two reasons to be happy on Wednesday evening. Parallel to the German footballers’ second victory at the European Championships against Hungary, the Olympic tennis champion made it into the quarter-finals in Halle, Westphalia. Zverev beat the Italian Lorenzo Sonego 6:4, 7:6 (7:5) in the round of 16. Zverev will now face the Frenchman Arthur Fils on Friday, who defeated Dominik Koepfer 6:3, 6:4.

Jan-Lennard Struff celebrated a successful start to the tournament. The 34-year-old from Warstein won his opening match against the Italian Luciano Darderi 6:7 (2:7), 7:5, 7:6 (12:10). Struff converted his tenth match point after 2 hours and 31 minutes. The Davis Cup professional will now face the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas on Thursday, who eliminated the German professional Henri Squire in the first round.

Zverev surprised by scheduling

There had been some discussion beforehand about the scheduling of Zverev’s match parallel to the German footballers’ match. Zverev himself had also expressed some surprise at the tournament planning. “That was definitely not my wish,” Zverev said after his first-round victory against Oscar Otte. “To be honest, I don’t think it was a smart move on the part of the tournament,” said the world number four, who is himself a big football fan. “If I wasn’t playing, I wouldn’t watch a tennis match either, I would watch football.” The organizers justified the scheduling by saying, among other things, that they wanted to give Zverev enough time to recover.

Since the previous matches on Wednesday had dragged on longer than expected, Zverev’s match against Sonego only started shortly after 7 p.m. Zverev was able to watch the first half of the German match on television. Despite Zverev’s match, a good 1,000 visitors stayed in the shade of the arena for the public viewing. When Ilkay Gündogan scored the 2-0, the cheers of the German fans could also be heard on Centre Court. Zverev grinned and knew that everything was going according to plan in faraway Stuttgart.

And he quickly had everything under control against Sonego. Zverev immediately broke and won the first set after 47 minutes. The Italian then improved in the second set and was suddenly 3-0 ahead in the tiebreak. But Zverev kept his nerve and made the victory perfect.

Struff had to give up the ATP tournament in Stuttgart last week due to a stomach upset. The after-effects of this were still clearly noticeable against Darderi. Struff did not move quite as well and made too many easy mistakes, especially in the first round.

After losing the first set, Struff improved and managed to equalize the set. In the decisive set, the German number two was one break behind, but fought back and took the win. “I’ve had difficult days, the preparation wasn’t easy,” said Struff. “I hope that I can recover well and then play a good match against Tsitsipas tomorrow.”