Germany's Alexander Zverev stunned second seed Carlos Alcaraz to reach the Australian Open semi-finals as a sublime display of serving took him to a 6-1 6-3 6-7(2) 6-4 victory on Wednesday.
Zverev made a flying start on Rod Laver Arena, dropping just two points on serve as he raced through the opening set. The sixth seed was rock solid to keep an unusually-subdued Alcaraz at arm's length and broke serve twice in the second set as errors leaked off the Spaniard's racket.The pattern continued in the third set as the German maintained an incredibly high level but he faltered for the first time when serving for the match and Alcaraz played an astonishing tiebreak to prolong the contest.
A fired-up Alcaraz seemed to have the momentum in the fourth set but a tiring Zverev dug deep to stay with the Spaniard and broke serve at 4-4 before closing out his first ever win against a top-five ranked opponent in a Grand Slam.He will face Russian Daniil Medvedev in Friday's semi-final.