PARIS—The place was familiar. Painfully familiar. Perhaps even fatally familiar. There was Alexander Zverev, trying to reach the fourth round of a major for only the second time in his career. Losing in the third round of the Australian Open earlier this year—a miserable fifth-set bagel versus Hyeon Chung—Zverev had vowed to improve on the game's biggest stages.
But there he was again, in the place, the abyss lurking. There was the matter of an inspired opponent, 29th-ranked Damir Dzumhur, lashing out at groundstrokes, generating enough depth to push Zverev into remote corners of the court and tossing in repeated drop shots, all the better to expose the No. 2 seed's severe shortcomings in the front part of the court.
“That's what he does," said Zverev. "That's what he's known for. A lot of drop shots, and the drop shots he was hitting were kind of ridiculous.”
All of Dzumhur's lashing and dropping brought him to the brink of a breakthrough win before he would succumb, 6-2, 3-6, 4-6, 7-6 (3), 7-5, six minutes short of four hours. Dzumhur had served for the match at 6-5 in the fourth set, only to drop serve at love and go down 5-1 in the tiebreak—nine of ten points lost, before losing the set altogether.
Dzumhur didn't go away, but he never went ahead for good. The top-ranked Bosnian rallied from 2-4 down in the fifth set to win three straight games and hold a match point, with Zverev serving at 4-5, 30-40—an opportunity nullified with a forceful service winner aimed at the Dzumhur backhand.
WATCH: Match point, Zverev d. Dzumhur