Zverev battles into Halle semis, joined by Medvedev

AFP | Halle

Email : editor@newsofbahrain.com

Home favourite Alexander Zverev shrugged off a mystery illness at Halle yesterday to battle past Italian Fabio Cobolli and progress to the last four of the Wimbledon warm-up.

The German second seed felled Cobolli 6-4, 7-6 (8/6) and will next face Daniil Medvedev, after the Russian third seed beat American Alex Michelsen 6-4, 6-3 in his quarter-final.

In a rematch of a thirdround meeting at Roland Garros three weeks ago, Zverev again produced an impressive serving performance.

He crucially rallied from 0-40 down in the second and fourth games of first set.

A finalist in Stuttgart last week Zvervev will be hoping to go one better on the grass of Halle after being a losing finalist at the tournament in 2016 and 2017.

It wasn’t all plain sailing as he had to take an unscheduled break at 1-1 and deuce in the first set.

“I felt fine before the match, and then out of nowhere I felt really, really bad and felt ill,” recounted Zverev.

“I went to throw up, and then 15 minutes later I felt okay again. So I don’t know what it was. I’ve never experienced that before, to be honest. Hopefully I will be fine the next couple of hours, when the adrenalin settles. After that, I think it was a pretty good match.”