Two Men Who Arrived in New York With Nothing and Found Everything

A US Open semifinal is supposed to be the reward for a tidy summer, and neither of these two men had one. Alexander Zverev came to New York admitting he had lost the habit of controlling matches; Karen Khachanov came without a single victory in the entire North American swing. Two weeks later they are the last pair standing on the bottom half of the draw, both having found their tennis at the precise moment it mattered. That is the strange, likeable thing about this match: it is not a meeting of two players in form, but of two players who rebuilt their form here, in public, round by round.

Zverev Climbed Out of the Hole He Dug Himself

Zverev's fortnight reads like a diary of a man slowly remembering who he is. Against Lorenzo Sonego he needed five sets, let a set point slip in the third-set tie-break, came within two points of going out in the fourth, and finally got through when Sonego double-faulted on break point in the decider. He then needed the full distance again against Quentin Halys, with US Open reporting noting that his serve and, unusually, his backhand had lost their normal authority. Almost ten hours of tennis in two matches is not preparation — it is survival.

And yet he chose to read it as a gift. "Exactly the match that I needed," he said of the Sonego escape, and by the third round the numbers began to agree with him. He started fast against Alejandro Tabilo, then drifted into one of those passive spells that have always shadowed him, had to save two set points, and then — crucially — went back to hitting with depth rather than waiting for mistakes. He also had the sense to practise lightly rather than hunt for timing through volume, which is the small, unglamorous decision that saves a deep run.

The Luciano Darderi match was the turn. Zverev controlled two sets with heavy, penetrating groundstrokes and a dominant first ball, absorbed a genuinely ferocious third set when Darderi raised the pace, and held his nerve in the deciding tie-break. "Compared to the first two matches, the level has been going up," he said, and that is an honest self-assessment rather than a slogan. The quarterfinal against Botic van de Zandschulp was comfortable partly because his opponent was carrying the weight of consecutive five-setters, but the encouraging signal is that Zverev's floor has risen: the forehand is more assertive, the backhand back near its usual stability, and he no longer needs emergency serving to stay alive.

His mood is confident and deliberately guarded. Roland Garros seems to have lifted some of the emotional weight he used to carry into the second week of majors, but he is refusing to enjoy it too loudly. "Confidence is incredibly important, but it can also disappear very quickly," he warned — a line that sounds like superstition and is in fact simply accurate about his own tournament.

Khachanov Practised Through a Losing Summer and Cashed It In Here

Khachanov's summer had reached the point where a loss to Bernard Tomic in Los Cabos barely registered as a shock. Montreal and Cincinnati brought nothing either, and he landed in New York with no wins and no external reason for optimism. His own explanation is unfashionably simple: "The American swing didn't go for me well, so I was practising, practising." He talks about this run as delayed payment for work already done, not as a bolt from the blue, and there is something persuasive in that.

The second round against Felix Auger-Aliassime was his first real statement, though it needs its footnote. Khachanov fell behind early, clawed the break back, lost the first-set tie-break to an overhit return, and then took hold of the centre of the court and never trailed again. Auger-Aliassime later revealed he had suffered dizziness and visual disturbance from around the midpoint, so the later stages cannot be treated as a clean reading of Khachanov's ceiling. What survives the footnote is the recovery from a poor start. "Survived" was his word for it — the vocabulary of a man who had forgotten what winning felt like.

The Learner Tien match is the one to hold on to. Leading the third-set tie-break, Khachanov mishit an open-court backhand that would have handed him set points, and Tien took the set, the momentum and a loud Louis Armstrong crowd with it. Khachanov's answer was to win the first games of the fourth before Tien could settle, to break straight back after dropping serve early in the fifth, and to save break points when Tien came again midway through the decider. Given his history of painful five-set nights in New York, refusing to replay that backhand in his head was the most valuable thing he did all week.

The quarterfinal gave him rest rather than information. He broke twice in the first set against Blockx, broke late in a tighter second, and then watched his opponent's body give way, toning down his own celebrations while trying to keep his intensity alive. "I was feeling I was dominating from the beginning," he said, and he probably was — but he never had to protect a lead against a healthy man over the full distance. He is measured about the stakes too: several major semifinals, no final yet, and a stated wish to "make one more step forward."

Whoever Owns the Middle of the Court Owns the Evening

Both men have looked at this match and seen the same thing. They are tall first-strike players who want court position behind the serve and then depth down the middle. Zverev expects the baseline exchange to settle it and intends to be the more aggressive one; Khachanov's version is more precise — "take control in the middle, dictate the play, but without rushing." That qualification matters, because trading crosscourt at one constant speed is exactly the rally Zverev is happiest to have all night.

The specific duel is Zverev's backhand against Khachanov's forehand. Zverev's safest route is repeated depth into the backhand corridor, pinning Khachanov and forcing him to hit that forehand from awkward positions; Khachanov's route is the reverse, using the forehand — described as "ripping" in the quarterfinal — to move Zverev sideways before he can settle into his rhythm. The risk for Zverev is the habit that showed up against both Sonego and Tabilo: after taking control he loops the forehand and waits. Khachanov steps in and punishes that far more severely than Tabilo did.

Serving will decide how long the rallies last, but the first neutralising return may decide the sets. Khachanov himself flagged Zverev's return as a real problem — that long reach blocks or drives serves back deep enough to deny the server his forehand — so he will need placement and variation rather than pure speed. Equally, Khachanov cannot afford soft second-serve returns, because Zverev has been using the first forehand after serve to seize control immediately. A media preview called this a serve-led match in which the return games carry disproportionate weight; Khachanov's own warning about prolonged rallies is not a contradiction, just the other half of the same picture.

The head-to-head is not settled in anyone's head, which is part of the appeal. Zverev has controlled plenty of their meetings, but Khachanov deliberately brought up his win over him in Canada last year, valuing it precisely because it ended a run of defeats. Physically, nobody reports an injury on either side. Khachanov had the harder fourth round and the easier quarterfinal, and finished earlier in the day, so he arrives fresher; Zverev has the accumulated load of those two early marathons, which is only a question if this becomes a long, high-intensity baseline fight.

Neither quarterfinal told us much — Zverev beat a man drained by five-setters, Khachanov beat a man whose body quit. So the honest position is doubt. The tie-breaks will be revealing: Zverev's tournament has been a sequence of escapes from set-point danger, while Khachanov's defining moment was failing to close one and then refusing to carry it forward. Under the Ashe lights, with no home player and a crowd that will simply follow the drama, the first close set should tell us which of those two kinds of nerve is holding up better.