US Open Day 3 - Top seed Zverev survives, barely

**Catherine Whitaker** (0:10)
Hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, coming to you shortly after 2 a.m. following the third day of action at the 2026 US Open, the final major of the tennis season. I'm Catherine Whitaker, alongside me, as always, are David Law and Matt Roberts, here in New York, bringing you daily shows right the way through this tournament and every Grand Slam of the season. Something that quite often involves recording shows well into the small hours of the morning, as we are right now. Moments after watching top seed, Alexander Zverev narrowly avoid adding his name to the list of only five men to have been top seed at a major and lost in the first round of that major, or rather four men, because poor old Leighton Hewitt is on that list twice. As Zverev has squeaked through 6-4 in the fifth over world number 89, Lorenzo Sonego, in four hours and 53 minutes. And Matt, we have been at this gig a while now. We're no strangers to the late finishes that this sport is all too happy to cough up. But I can't remember a start to a Grand Slam quite like this. 2:02 a.m. finish on Sunday, or rather Monday morning. 12.5 on Monday, Tuesday morning. And now 1:55 a.m. Things are getting out of hand here, surely.

**Matt Roberts** (1:39)
Yes, we quite often talk about the whiplash that we experience going from Wimbledon to the US. Open. And it's present in lots of different ways at the tournament. But this one might be the biggest, you know. Wimbledon is the example that there is another way to do this.
It doesn't have to be 2 a.m. And there's many reasons, many, many reasons why I find it so irritating. But the one I'm going to choose today is Lorenzo Sonego has just played some of the most dazzling, electric, stunning tennis of this tournament and of his career.
David can attest to that. We were high fiving on the sofa as he was coming up with these incredible shots. There's no one in the stadium. There's no one there. There's no one seeing it. Like, how do you make Lorenzo Sonego a star of the sport if there's no one in the stadium to watch his best moments? I mean, what are we doing?

**Catherine Whitaker** (2:50)
Justice for Lorenzo, David.

**David Law** (2:52)
Make it big in America whilst they're all asleep. You know, it's unbelievable.
But he was sensational tonight. I mean, there was a spell when he got broken. Was it in the fourth set? He got broken. He was two sets to one up and he got broken the fourth set. And we thought, OK, that's it. He's done. This will be easy from now on. He reeled off a couple of games that had the word Alcaraz mentioned several times.

**Matt Roberts** (3:25)
It was like he was possessed.

**David Law** (3:26)
Yes, it was just ridiculous the way he was chasing balls down, retrieving them, manipulating them, passing Zverev just in the most unlikely way.
And then he reeled off a service game where he hit three aces in a row in a backhand pass who shot winners straight afterwards. I mean, he came very close to knocking out Zverev.

**Matt Roberts** (3:51)
Two points away.

**David Law** (3:52)
Yeah, two points away. He was 5-4 up, love 30, two sets to one on Zverev's serve. And look, huge credit to Zverev for digging his way out of that because that's what he does, as well as anybody, I think, is stick around, hang around, find a way.
But yeah, it still does leave this sort of bitter taste in your mouth. But I mean, the sound of the stadium, it's quite nice because it's almost more like Wimbledon in the sound, because you don't have 20,000 conversations going on in the stadium, because there are only about 600 people left. And you could hear a pin drop. It's just not supposed to sound like that world-class sport at the very highest level.

**Catherine Whitaker** (4:44)
And obviously, there are quite often, when we talk about the late finishes of this sport, it is pointed out that it's a global sport. Okay, it's a really inconvenient time here in the US, but there'll be somewhere in the world where this is a brilliant time to watch tennis. But the whole experience is diminished by the fact that, as you say, there's nobody there watching.
There's a reason why this is a 24,000-seat stadium, right? That is part of the US. Open Experience, and you're watching the top seed play a dazzling match in front of 600 But, okay, yes, he's stuck around Alexander Zverev. And as you say, like, that is an incredible skill for a tennis player to have, and he's about as good at it as anybody. But this is surely further evidence of what we've seen from Zverev over the summer post-Wimbledon. Of course, French Open that he won, and Wimbledon, where he reached the final. In fact, possibly Wimbledon, he played even better tennis than the French Open. Best form we've ever seen from him. But we haven't seen that since the grass. And tonight was surely further evidence that this is a guy out of form, quite frankly.