MELBOURNE, Australia — Alexander Zverev began 2020 with three consecutive losses, which meant he had plenty of problems — and plenty of time on his hands ahead of the Australian Open.
He showed up early and got to work, spending up to seven hours per day practicing in the week before the decade’s first Grand Slam tournament.
That extra time paid off.
Zverev, a 22-year-old from Germany, reached his first major semifinal by overcoming a terrible start Wednesday at Melbourne Park and putting together a 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 victory over three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka.
Semis finally😅😅😅
— Alexander Zverev (@AlexZverev) January 29, 2020
“I hope this will be the first of many,” Zverev said
After ceding the opening set in 24 minutes, Zverev regrouped and recalibrated his strategy, using all of his 6-foot-6 frame to get to balls along the baseline and stretch points until Wawrinka faltered. It worked. Zverev’s sometimes shaky serve — he was double-faulting once per game while losing all of his matches at the season-opening ATP Cup — was suddenly terrific, and Wawrinka’s barrel-chested baseline bashing weakened, as if he might be injured.
How bad were things earlier in January for Zverev?
“I’ve been struggling with my forehand, my backhand, my volleys, my drop shot, my return, my waking up in the morning — my everything,” he joked Wednesday. “It was not only my serve.”
Zverev also was self-deprecating before his first-round match last week, saying he knew he couldn’t win the championship. After his opening victory, he pledged to donate all of the champion’s prize money, a little more than 4 million Australian dollars (about $2.85 million), to relief efforts for the wildfires raging around the country if he were to go all the way.
He has just two matches to go now.
Wawrinka’s backhand is a one-handed tour de force that is not only his signature stroke but also among the most respected and feared shots in men’s tennis. But it let him down on this day. Wawrinka finished with five winners and 31 errors on that side, 18 of them unforced.
It all added up to Zverev getting to the final four at a major in his 19th appearance. He had been 0-2 in quarterfinals.
“I’ve done well in other tournaments … but I never could break that barrier in a Grand Slam,” he said.
On Friday, Zverev will take on No. 1 Rafael Nadal or No. 5 Dominic Thiem for a berth in the final. Nadal vs. Thiem was scheduled for Wednesday night local time. The other men’s semifinal is Thursday, with defending champion Novak Djokovic facing 20-time major winner Roger Federer for the 50th time.
Zverev and Wawrinka, a dozen years older at 34, played on the steamiest afternoon of the tournament so far, with the temperature in the mid-80s Fahrenheit and no breeze.
Wawrinka had a far tougher trek to the quarterfinals, with a pair of five-set wins along the way, including one over No. 4 Daniil Medvedev, the 2019 US Open runner-up, in his previous outing. Meanwhile, Zverev hadn’t dropped a set.
Yet it took merely 16 minutes for Wawrinka to move to a 5-0 lead by grabbing 20 of the match’s first 26 points, helped immensely by Zverev’s issues controlling the ball. He accumulated nine unforced errors and just one winner in that span.
Soon enough, that set was finished.
“I was getting ready to [explain] to the press why I lost in straight sets, to be honest,” Zverev said.
Instead, Zverev changed tactics and made things competitive in the second set, thanks in part to his getting into a real groove while serving and taking all 20 points in those games.
That allowed him to play more freely in his return games, and he broke to go up 5-3 when Wawrinka shanked a backhand on one point, then netted a forehand on the next. Zverev shook his right fist and bellowed, “Come ooooooooon!”
One more hold at love later, and he evened things at a set apiece.
Right then, suddenly if briefly, the quality of play devolved significantly at both ends of the court. Breaks were traded to open the third set, as 10 of its initial 13 points came via unforced errors by one man or the other.
Soon, though, Zverev was straightened out for good, while Wawrinka had more and more struggles.
A backhand into the net gave Zverev the only other break he needed to collect that set. A backhand long let Zverev break for 1-0 in the fourth, and another backhand into the net put Zverev up a double break at 3-0.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.