Alexander Zverev defeated Karen Khachanov on Friday to reach the second US Open final of his career, setting up a championship match against the winner of the all-American semifinal between Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe.
The top-seeded German won a tense three-set battle 6-3, 7-6 (9/7), 7-6 (8/6), extending his run to a third consecutive Grand Slam final this year.
Zverev, who won the French Open and was runner-up at Wimbledon earlier this year, will go into Sunday's final as the favorite in a tournament that lost Jannik Sinner to injury and saw Carlos Alcaraz eliminated in the quarterfinals. The US Open, played on hard courts at Flushing Meadows in New York, is the last Grand Slam of the tennis calendar.
Zverev survives late scare against Khachanov
Zverev fended off two set points from Khachanov to close out the third set and complete the win. Sunday's final gives him the chance to put to rest memories of his collapse in the 2020 US Open final, when he let a two-set lead slip against Austria's Dominic Thiem.
At 29, Zverev is enjoying the best season of his career and could finish it with more Grand Slam titles than either Sinner or Alcaraz, both of whom have had to settle for one major title each this year because of injuries.
Zverev said that sometimes things fall in a player's favor, adding that he had come so close so many times before that maybe this year, as he put it, God had decided this was going to be his year. He was speaking about a season in which he could even mount a challenge to Sinner's position as world number one.
A slow start in New York
Zverev's run through the draw in New York started slowly before building momentum, culminating in a solid win over Khachanov, the world number 50 whose run to the semifinals came as an unexpected one.
Zverev had to battle until two in the morning in each of his first two rounds of the tournament. After that, helped by a favorable section of the draw, he advanced without much difficulty, though also without particularly inspiring tennis.
He said that after those opening two matches he started striking the ball better and his tennis improved as a result, adding that otherwise he would not be standing in the US Open final.
Two tiebreaks and 15 aces
Friday's semifinal was Zverev's first daytime match of the tournament. He set the tempo behind his serve, firing 15 aces, and gritted his teeth through two tight, tension-filled tiebreaks.
Khachanov, a US Open semifinalist in 2022, led 5-3 in the first tiebreak but could not finish the job, handing the initiative back to the German with two unforced errors.
The Russian saved one set point with a crosscourt backhand that drew cheers from the crowd, among them actors Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, but he could not save a third set point and dropped the second set.
Khachanov refused to give up in the deciding set and forced a second tiebreak, one in which he built an even bigger early lead than in the first. He went up 4-0 and held two set points that would have extended the match, but let both slip with missed forehands before Zverev closed out the win after two hours and 55 minutes on court.
Shelton and Tiafoe chase a home final
The other men's semifinal, between Americans Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, was played on the day marking 25 years since the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York.
Shelton, who beat Alcaraz earlier in the tournament, or his friend Tiafoe will become only the second American man to reach a US Open final in two decades, with a chance to keep the trophy on home soil for the first time since 2003.
Women's final set for Saturday
The women's title will be decided on Saturday between Belarus's Aryna Sabalenka, a two-time champion in New York, and Kazakhstan's Elena Rybakina, who has newly risen to world number one.
