MELBOURNE — Dominic Thiem will get another chance to win his first major championship after defeating Alexander Zverev, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (4), in a taut men’s semifinal at the Australian Open on Friday night.
Thiem, a 26-year-old Austrian, will play Novak Djokovic in Sunday’s men’s final. It will be first time the two have met in the last match of a Grand Slam event.
Thiem’s win over his German rival was hard fought, but featured plenty of surprising errors and tense, uneven play. Zverev, 22, raced out in front, dominating behind powerful serving and deft precision. But Thiem turned the momentum around when Zverev briefly faltered in the second set. He went ahead and stayed in front, saving two set points on his own serve in the third set to hold on and keep the lead. He earned a match points after a pair of stunning forehand winners, and then ended it with a short volley hit into the open court.
Sunday’s final will offer Thiem yet another chance to fulfill the expectations that have swirled around him for years. Many tennis experts have thought the powerful Austrian would be the player from his generation most likely to rise through the ranks and regularly challenge the so-called Big Three: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, each in his 30s.
Thiem has come close to breaking through at a Grand Slam before. Playing on the red clay that most suits his backcourt game, he made the finals of the French Open in both 2018 and 2019, but lost both times to Nadal.
This final could be different. In Melbourne over the last two weeks, he has displayed a remarkable ability to play his best when he needed it most. He did it against Zverev after losing the first set, and then again in the third and fourth set tiebreakers. In the quarterfinals he beat Nadal in a four set marathon, winning three tense tiebreakers to take the match.
The results here build on his tour performance over the last year. During that time his record against tennis’s legendary trio is stellar: 3-0 against Federer, and 2-1 against both Nadal and Djokovic. He beat the top ranked Djokovic at the ATP Finals in London.
Doing that again on Sunday will take a monumental effort. Djokovic has won the Australian Open seven times, the record for men. In last year’s championship match, he defeated Nadal with ease. This year in Melbourne, he has been similarly sharp, dropping just one set and defeating an injury-plagued Federer in a semifinal played on Thursday.
A win by Thiem could signal that a new generation — perhaps led by the Austrian, but also including players like Zverev and U.S. Open finalist Daniil Medvedev, 23 — may finally be set to crack the spell held over men’s tennis by the Big Three for well over a decade. The aging trio has won 55 of the last 66 major titles, and 12 in a row.
In ending the seventh-seeded Zverev’s run, Thiem also put a stop to one of the tournament’s must intriguing subplots. Early in the tournament, Zverev had said that if he were to claim his first Grand Slam this year in Melbourne, he would donate all of his first place earnings, $2.78 million, to the effort to fight the deadly Australian fires.
Friday’s match was played before a capacity crowd of 15,000 at Rod Laver Arena.
