Germany's Zverev was just one win away from his maiden Grand Slam title, and after taking a one-set lead over Djokovic in the semi-finals, he received a retirement gift to reach his third career Grand Slam final. In his post-match press conference, Zverev talked about his feelings about Djokovic's retirement and how the Serbian king helped him get out of the slump and regain competitiveness at the Grand Slams last year.

Zverev

After reaching the final of last year's French Open (losing to Alcaraz), Zverev lost to American brother Fritz at Wimbledon (fourth round) and US Open (quarter-finals). The German revealed that during the Shanghai Rolex Masters last year, he had an in-depth exchange with Djokovic about this.

"After the French Open, I was very disappointed with my performance for the rest of the season. "I hadn't won a title for a long time, and the US Open loss was especially sad for me because I thought I had a good chance of going to the deep round and going to the final, and I thought I was doing very, very bad," Zverev recalled. ”

"I asked him [in Shanghai] how he felt in tough times, what he had been through in 2016, 2017 and so on, how he recovered from that slump. He has been very happy to share with me and we had a couple of long conversations there. Interestingly, we also train together a lot in Shanghai, and he keeps telling me about his experience of facing adversity. ”

Speaking about Djokovic's retirement in the semifinals yesterday due to injury, Zverev said: "Of course I didn't expect that to happen, I think the intensity of the first set was very high. With a muscle injury, he probably knew that after losing the first set, he would have to play for three hours to beat me, which is very difficult to do with a torn muscle. It's hard to keep playing at a high level because the injury doesn't get better, at worst it gets worse. Like I said on the field, I have only respect for him, I look up to him a lot, that's the way it is. ”

Zverev had two days off after his quarter-final win and two days after his semi-final victory, but even after only playing one set against Djokovic, the German said his rhythm would not be disrupted.

"I still think we played at a high level in the first set, so in that respect, I still have a certain amount of play." "It's not that he decided to retire before the fight, but if I had four days off, it would have been a bit too much, because it would have been like you were going to play a tournament all over again." You don't want to be like that before the final, you want to be in the rhythm of the game. It certainly wasn't what I was expecting, but it just happened. I'm certainly happy to be in the final of a Grand Slam again and to get another chance to win another Grand Slam title. ”

(Compiled by Faye Wong)