Jean Lennard Struve reached the final for the first time

After the departure of Alexander Zverev, Jean-Lennard Struve reached the final of the ATP Championship for the first time.

Jean-Lennard Struve shook his right fist for a while, and he didn’t want to allow himself more emotion at first. The big dream is at your fingertips. At the ATP or Grand Slam Championships 171, the 31-year-old Warsteiner is fighting the final for the first time. He said after 6: 4, 6: 1 against the qualifiers Ilga Iwashka (Belarus), who previously eliminated top seed Alexander Zverev was in the quarter-finals, in the BR.

The second seed is also playing in Germany for a prize of 41,145 euros on Sunday (1.30 pm), as well as a car and leather pants of 180,000 euros. Opponent Nikolaus Basilashwili (Georgia): He defeated No. 35 in the world ranking second-seeded Casper Rudd (Norway) 6: 1, 6: 2. The step he longs for to reach the first final of his career should not be the last in Munich: “Of course I want to win, otherwise I will not have to compete, “he came in 44th in the world ranking.

In cold weather, Struve got off to a bad start against Iwashaka, who is currently ranked 107th in the world ranking and, according to Zverev, “in the form of his life.” Soon he was down 3-0, but he made his way into the match. He finished the first set with a header, and in the second set, Struve was not slowed by drizzle after a break to make it 2-1. After 86 minutes, Iwashaka made a double foul on the first match point. “I stayed calm and then at some point took off his tooth as well,” said Struve.

Struve played much more convincingly than Alexander Zverev the day before. The German was number one unbeatable after 7: 6 (7: 5), 5: 7, and 3: 6 against Iwaschka. “This is a game I should never lose,” he said. “I am sad and disappointed.” Above all, the serve, which he could barely train on due to elbow problems, let him down: “At some point I lost my movement and no longer knew how to get the ball into the field,” the sixth world ranking complained that served 14 double fouls.

Zverev’s arm shook especially in two crucial matches. At 5:4 pm in the second set, he worked on a win – “then” he complained helplessly, “I started doing something through my posting”. This was followed by losing the match after three double faults and losing a group after two more. The disaster continued at 4: 3 in the third set: Zverev abandoned the match after three double faults to 3: 5. He said with depression “relatively obviously” that he lost the match due to his serving.

Bitter Zverev: Because sending it was his problem “in the last two years,” he worked so hard on it that the elbow problems happened in the first place. Ultimately, he was unable to improve his service because of this. In Munich, he was “pain-free for the first time in eight months” – but nothing of the plan for self-confidence came here. The service site remains a construction site ahead of the Masters in Madrid, Rome and the French Open.