Top-seeded Alexander Zverev needed a second straight five-set marathon to survive the first week of the U.S. Open, outlasting Frenchman Quentin Halys 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-7(3), 6-3 in a second-round match that did not end until 2:15 a.m. Friday. The win came on a chaotic night at Flushing Meadows that also knocked two more seeded men out of the draw, leaving the top half increasingly thin behind the newly crowned French Open champion.
The match, played under the lights at Arthur Ashe Stadium, ran 4 hours and 33 minutes. Zverev served 29 aces and forced 20 break-point chances but converted only five, a low return that reflected how often the German's own game wobbled. Halys, ranked outside the top 30, twice pushed the match to a tiebreak and took a set off Zverev in the fourth before the top seed closed it out in the decider.
A second straight ordeal
Halys built a 4-1 lead in the third set and held a break point for a 5-1 cushion before Zverev reeled off five straight games to steal it in a tiebreak. He then dropped the fourth set in another tiebreak, pushing the match past the four-hour mark, before building a 4-2 lead in the fifth on the strength of an overhead smash and closing out the win on a forced error. The result made Zverev the first top seed in the Open era to open a Grand Slam with back-to-back five-set matches, following a 4-hour, 53-minute escape against Lorenzo Sonego in the first round that also finished after 2 a.m. Across two rounds, he has now spent more than nine hours on court in New York.
Zverev is occupying the No. 1 seed at a major for the first time in his career this week, a position handed to him less by his own ranking than by the absence of world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who withdrew from the tournament with an injury — his first missed Grand Slam since Wimbledon in 2019. The seeding follows the biggest result of Zverev's career: a five-set win over Flavio Cobolli in the Roland Garros final in June that delivered his first Grand Slam title and made him the first German man to win a major since Boris Becker in 1996.
Seeds keep falling
Zverev was not the only high seed pushed to the brink, or past it, on Thursday. No. 3 seed Felix Auger-Aliassime was beaten in four sets by Karen Khachanov, 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-2, 6-2, after growing ill midway through the match.
I just couldn't feel well and was dizzy and seeing spots and couldn't recover.
Felix Auger-Aliassime, after his loss to Karen Khachanov
No. 6 seed Alex de Minaur also went out, beaten 6-4, 7-5, 6-2 by Botic van de Zandschulp, adding a second unseeded name to the list of players who have reached the third round by eliminating a top-ten seed this week. Combined with Sinner's absence, three of the tournament's top six seeds are already gone before the first weekend of the second week.
Zverev, for his part, credited off-season conditioning for his ability to keep grinding through five-set matches deep into the New York night.
That's what I go to the gym for. That's what I go to the track for and train for — to be able to come out on top of these difficult moments.
Alexander Zverev, after beating Quentin Halys
He will need more of that conditioning against 25th-seeded Alejandro Tabilo in the third round, a rematch of two prior meetings Zverev has won. A third consecutive five-setter would be a run without recent precedent for a men's Grand Slam champion, and it would test whether the physical toll of two marathon nights catches up with him before the tournament reaches its second week.
