If you’ve been following this year’s French Open, you already know: it’s been a weird one. Some great players didn’t make it to Paris because of injuries; other top seeds lost in early-round upsets; still others lost in later-round upsets. We’ve had heated disputes over line calls (the French is the only major that still uses humans rather than machines to make these often-tricky calls); mano-a-mano taunting at the net between players; brutal, forehand-melting temperatures and swirling winds.
After all that, we already knew we’d have a first-time men’s champion today (after Mirra Andreeva won her first slam yesterday), with second-seed Alexander Zverev of Germany, rather famously the best player on tour to never have won a Grand Slam tournament, squaring off against Italy’s Flavio Cobolli, playing his first-ever major final. What we didn’t know is that we’d end up with an epic, five-set almost-upset before Zverev finally prevailed, 6-1, 4-6, 6-4, 6-7, 6-1.
With Lily Collins, Rami Malek, Salma Hayek and François-Henri Pinault, and Lenny Kravitz (plus, yes, Mirra Andreeva, wearing bedazzled heart-shaped red-tinted sunglasses) among the thousands taking in the action on Court Philippe-Chatrier, it looked early on as if we might be in for a quick romp, with Zverev, sprinting away with the first set. Cobolli, though, seemed to shake off any big-match jitters in the second set, breaking Zverev’s serve and capturing the set; Zverev returned the favor next, taking the third.
With the tension doing nothing but ratcheting up, the fourth set saw both players break each other’s serve before creeping, inevitably, to a tiebreaker, where every point seemed like its own mini opera, everything drop shots, passing shots that just caught the line, 20-shot rallies, and plaintive appeals from both players to both the umpire and, seemingly, the gods. Zverev raced out to a 3-1 lead (the tiebreak is decided by the first player to reach seven points, though you have to win by at least two points), only for Cobolli to rattle off four straight points. At 5-4, Cobolli hit the best drop shot of his life, giving him a set point on his serve. He had the set on his racquet, needing only a simple smash at the net—and he missed it wide. No matter: He crushed the next point, sending us to a fifth and deciding set.
That’s about where the drama ended: Zverev raced through the final set, taking it at 6-1 and collapsing in tears at the baseline, having finally won the thing that had eluded him his entire career.
“This sport is so special to me in so many ways,” Zverev told the crowd during the trophy presentation. “I’ve had the best moments of my life on these courts, and I’ve had the worst moment of my life on this court over there in the corner [referring to the moment in 2022 when he catastrophically tore ligaments in his ankle during a match]. I lost a Grand Slam final here two years ago. This time, it’s a happy ending.”
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