Picture Credit: Twitter
It was quite a fascinating battle between two great tennis players. While Novak Djokovic was chasing his Calendar Grand Slam and wanted to book a spot in the final, Alexander Zverev was also aiming for the final berth and announce the arrival of the next generation of tennis stars. In the process, the two provided the fans at the Arthur Ashe Stadium a superb show which included a record 53-shot rally.
The rally has now also become the longest rally in a US Open men's singles semifinals ever- beating the previous best of 51 from Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras in 1999. The rally came at a point when Zvereb was down 15-40 but ultimately it was the German who won the rally as he finished with a forehand. But it was Djokovic who won the set 6-4, which gave him a one-set advantage.
Check out the video of the rally here:
The two were competing to decide who will play Daniil Medvedev in Sunday's final. Eventually, it was world number 1 Novak Djokovic who won the match 4-6, 6-2, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 and registered a place in the US Open final. He is now just one win away from not only completing a calendar grand slam, having won the Wimbledon, the French Open and the Australian Open already, he will also become the sole owner of the record of the grandest slam titles won by a male tennis player.
Currently, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic all are tied at 20 Grand Slam titles each. However, with Nadal and Djokovic battling injury concerns and not participating in this event, the ball is in Djokovic's court to take the record to 21 which could further act as a motivation to his rivals Federer and Nadal.
Notably, the last man to complete the calendar grand slam -- winning the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open in the same year -- was Rod Laver in 1969. Recently, Laver himself tweeted a picture in which he could be seen watching Friday's semifinal. "Great to be back in New York, watching the history channel," he captioned the picture.
Here is Laver's tweet: