Uruguayan Pablo Cuevas produced a moment of brilliance on Friday to turn the tables on #NextGenATP German Alexander Zverev in a 3-6, 6-0, 6-4 victory at the Mutua Madrid Open for a place in his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 semi-final.
Cuevas hit the Hot Shot of the year as the pair's first meeting turned in his favour early in the second set, when Zverev served at 0-1, 40/30. Cuevas drew Zverev to the net with a delicate drop shot, only to be drawn to the net himself. Zverev then produced a backhand lob volley that sent the World No. 27 scurrying back to the baseline. Assured at the net, Zverev appeared to be the favourite to win the rally. But Cuevas produced a sensational no-look winner that helped to give him an injection of confidence.
"I don't practice it very often," admitted Cuevas. "It was just a last-minute thing that I hit. I thought it would work... Normally I never try that shot. Today I tried that shot. I thought I hit the ball pretty well. When I looked that I placed it in a good place in the court, I was happy."
The winner carried him to his 15th match win of the season in a run of seven straight games that sucked the wind out of Zverev's sails. He will now play eighth seed Dominic Thiem or lucky loser Borna Coric on Saturday.
Zverev, who had captured two ATP World Tour titles this year at the Open Sud de France (d. Gasquet) and at last week’s BMW Open by FWU (d. Pella), showed no signs of fatigue early on in his eighth match in 10 days.
Zverev competed with great maturity under a closed roof on Court Arantxa Sanchez Vicario to break Cuevas for a 3-1 lead. He closed out the 26-minute set to love with a short forehand crosscourt winner.
But Cuevas refocused and got his reward in the memorable second game with a backhand winner down the line, on his fourth break point opportunity. He hit his spots on serve and maintained good groundstroke depth for errors to creep into Zverev’s game. Cuevas ran through the second set in 28 minutes, losing four of his service points.
The decider was a tighter affair, featuring no breaks of serve until the final game, when mental and physical fatigue caught up with Zverev who dropped his serve to 15.
Cuevas, a three-time reigning champion at the Brasil Open in Sao Paulo, won his fourth straight three-setter of the week (also over Thomaz Bellucci, Nicolas Mahut and Benoit Paire) to improve to a 15-8 mark in 2017.
World No. 19 Zverev, who lost to Nick Kyrgios in the quarter-finals of the Miami Open presented by Itau, is now 21-9 on the season and leads the Emirates ATP Race To Milan, for one of eight spots at the 21-and-under Next Gen ATP Finals from 7-11 November.
