Sinner downs Zverev in slugfest, will play Lehecka in Sunday’s final of Miami Open

By Harvey Fialkov / Staff writer

MIAMI GARDENS – Alexander Zverev, inarguably, the best player to not yet win a Grand Slam, played a near perfect match.

Yet, he still lost his seventh consecutive match – all on hard courts – to world No. 2, Jannik Sinner, 6-3, 7-6 (4) in a Mount Everest-level semifinal match Friday night in the Miami Open.

Zverev, intent on becoming a more aggressive player in every aspect of his attack, threw everything at the unflappable Italian. He won 76 percent of his first serves, won 67 percent of his second serves, 50 percent of Sinner’s second serves, was 10 of 14 at the net, and slammed 21 winners with just 11 unforced errors. These are astronomical stats that scream victory.

Instead, it was the robotic demeanor and pinpoint strokes of the best hard-court player in the world – as per Zverev – who celebrated with his trademark fist in the air in the direction of his player’s box and coach Darren Cahill.

“It was a high-quality match for both of us,’ said the second-seed Sinner, 24, who is into his fourth Miami final in five attempts, which includes the 2024 title. “I feel the difference was a couple of points I served very well which helped me.”

That could be the understatement of the year. Sinner crushed 15 aces, including 5-of-6 of 123-mph or more from 5-6 down, 15-0 to the first two points of the second-set tiebreaker. It was a serving masters (1000) class.

In the other semifinal, the confident Frenchman with the massive strokes, 21-year-old Arthur Fils enters every match with his go-to tennis mantra all about GABOS: “Game ain’t based on sympathy.”

On Friday afternoon  Czech Jiri Lehecka showed Fils no sympathy or mercy  in a 6-2, 6-2 clinic – and  reached his first Masters 1000 final in the process.

On Sunday at 3 p.m., Lehecka will have to deal with Mr. Sinner, who’s on an historic roll in Masters Series events and on hard courts.

“Doesn’t matter who I play,’’ said Lehecka, who has an 0-3 record vs Sinner and has not won a set against the Italian.  “I will need to play a good match. I will need to play what I need to play, and it will be a different match, because there will be a different opponent. So, the tactics will most probably be different than today’s, and my approach to that match will be different.“

Although Zverev had just five aces against Sinner, he had double-digit service winners and had outplayed Sinner in the second set – until it got to 4-4 in the breaker. His 132-mph serve down the tee was somehow returned by a lunging Sinner. Zverev smacked his floating return back, but Sinner threw up a lob that the 6-foot-6 German backed up and yanked it into the net for the critical mini-break.

Zverev’s head dropped, knowing he didn’t close the deal. Sinner then won the next two points; first with a blazing forehand to Zverev’s corner and then on his first match point, a serve to Zverev’s backhand that the German floated long.

The overhead will surely be in Zverev’s dreams as he heads to Monaco for the clay-court season.

“For the rest of my career I’m going to be that player,’’  Zverev said, of being more aggressive. “I thought the second set could’ve gone both ways. I felt like I started to really dominate from the baseline. Of course, the last few games he was serving incredible and I was barely touching the ball. Credit to him. Of course, the overhead I missed is very unfortunate. That decided the tiebreaker at the end. I lost the ball a little bit and jumped and mistimed it. It is what it is. We move on.”

Zverev had most of the packed Hard Rock Stadium cheering for him, partly because he was the underdog. Zverev playfully orchestrated the crowd to boo the chair umpire for assessing him a time violation and the crowd also was hopeful of a third set.

Sinner extended his record of consecutive sets won in Masters 1000s to 32 and his Miami record before finals to 23-1 with his lone loss due to retirement to Francisco Cerundolo in the 2022 tournament.

Far more significantly, he needs one more win to become the eighth man to win Indian Wells and Miami in the same year for the Sunshine Double. But no one, neither man nor woman, has done it without dropping a set – until now?

“I try to perform the best possible in every event,’’ Sinner said. “Obviously, bigger events I like to play more. I’m very happy to play one more final in Miami. It has been an incredible place since the first day I’ve been here and I played some great tennis in the past.

“On Sunday it’s going to be a very tough match. I looked at the date ahead of me. He’s a very tough opponent. He played incredible tennis throughout the whole week here, so he doesn’t have anything to lose.”

Zverev was 0-2 on his break points, but he will move up to No. 3 when the new rankings come out on Monday.

Just as fellow Czech Jakub Mensik announced himself to the tennis world by winning the Miami Open for his first title last year, another Czech is hoping to follow in his footsteps with the most significant trophy of his career. If Lehecka can upset Sinner, it would be the second time that two Czechs won this tournament in successive years, dating back to 1986 and ’87 when Miloslav Mecir and Ivan Lendl pulled it off.

Fils, who saved four match points in his spectacular three-tiebreak, 2-hour-47-minute victory over American Tommy Paul Thursday night, seemed flat, fatigued and frustrated. He bounced his racket off the hard courts as much as he bounced the ball before his serve, which only produced seven of 21 points on his second offerings.

Lehecka also won 82 percent of his first-serve points and converted 5-of-7 net rushes.

Call it his tournament-long zone or just coming into his own.

“Definitely, I think that to return was one of my goals for today,’’ said Lehecka, seeded 21, who had 16 winners and 14 errors. “I knew that I really needed to put Arthur under pressure since the first moment of the point. It doesn’t matter whether I was serving or returning. I felt that I needed to be very aggressive. I can’t let him have some more time to work with his forehand, because his forehand is amazing. I think that we all saw that in his last couple of matches here, that when he has time, he can basically do whatever he wants with that shot. So, I felt that I needed to put a little bit more risk into my returns to be the one who is dictating the pace of the of the point.”

Fils, into his first career Masters 1000 semifinal, said afterwards his issue had to do with mental fatigue, not physical. Much of that had to do with Lehecka, who is not only knocking the fuzz off the ball with his rocket forehands, but has yet to be broken in any of his five matches, saving all 11 break points.

“It’s not really the fitness. It’s more the mind, it’s more fatigue, but mentally,’’ said Fils, who previously was 2-1 against Lehecka, including a recent straight-set win in the Doha quarters last month. “Physically, if you put me on the treadmill, I can run for six hours. Just mentally, I need to find something to help me, to give more. In this kind of important matches, semis, quarters, or finals, when I need to give an extra push here, that’s when I need to find the energy, and I need to find a way to do it. I mean, I’m still 21 so we have a lot of time.”

Lehecka, 24, did not face a break point against Fils – who hadn’t lost his serve all tournament until Lehecka broke him in the first game of the match and three more times in the rout. The last player to hold serve until the final of a Masters 1000 was Novak Djokovic at Shanghai in 2018.

“I must say that was one of the better matches that I played in my life,’’ said Lehecka, the fourth Czech to reach the final in Miami, joining Lendl, Tomas Berdych and Mensik. “I’m very satisfied with the way I approached the match, even though I knew that our last match against Arthur, how [bad] I lost. He was the better player and I knew he would know what he needed to do.

“At the same time I tried to learn from that. The good start into the match helped me feel relaxed, to feel that I have more things under my control.”

Lehecka was about to break into the Top  30 when he reached the semis of the 2024 Madrid Masters. However, that’s when he sustained a stress fracture in his vertebrae while playing Felix Auger-Aliassime that cost him three months and at least a year to regain his confidence. His rank is expected to at least improve from No. 22 to a career-best No. 14 on Monday, or to No. 12 if he wins the title.

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About the Miami Open presented by Itaú

The 2026 Miami Open presented by Itaú will be played March 15 – March 29 at Hard Rock Stadium. The 15-day event is owned and operated by MARI and Hard Rock Stadium. The Miami Open is one of nine ATP Masters 1000 Series events on the ATP calendar, a WTA 1000 event on the WTA calendar, and annually hosts the world’s best players, with recent champions including the top players in each tour’s rankings – Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek. In 2025, the tournament attracted more than 400,000 spectators over its 15 days at Hard Rock Stadium. Widely regarded as the most glamorous stop on the ATP and WTA calendars, the Miami Open is defined by the city’s vibrant culture, nightlife, five-star dining and hospitality, iconic beaches, and celebrity appeal, along with its close proximity to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

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