VIENNA: Jannik Sinner clinched his fourth title of the season on Sunday as the Italian rallied from a set down to beat Alexander Zverev in the final of the Vienna Open.
Sinner dropped his first set of the tournament before staging a comeback to see off Zverev 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 to land the 22nd title of his career.
It is his second triumph in Vienna, where he also lifted the trophy in 2023, and extended his winning run on indoor hard courts to 21 matches going into next week’s final Masters 1000 of the year in Paris.
But the top seed had to do it the hard way after falling behind as world No. 3 Zverev, who had won four of seven previous meetings, secured the only break of the first set to take the upper hand.
Sinner replied by racing 3-0 ahead in the second set as he forced a decider against the 2021 champion.
Zverev saved two break points in the fifth game of the third set but Sinner maintained the pressure despite battling a thigh issue in his first event since retiring with cramp at the Shanghai Masters.
Sinner created another opportunity at 5-all with a blistering backhand down the line and won a lengthy rally the following point to snatch the key break.
A routine hold wrapped up victory for the 24-year-old who has reached the final in eight of his 10 tournaments this season, with Sinner adding to his titles at the Australian Open, Wimbledon and Beijing.
Meanwhile, Belinda Bencic said she surprised even herself by winning a second title of the season in Tokyo on Sunday, a year after returning to tennis from having a baby.
The Swiss beat the Czech Republic’s Linda Noskova 6-2, 6-3 in the Pan Pacific Open final, following up her success at the Abu Dhabi Open in February.
Bencic gave birth to a daughter in April last year and returned to the WTA Tour six months later.
The 28-year-old said she did not expect her comeback to “go this fast and this well.”
“I’m really enjoying my time back on tour and I think it’s showing in the results,” she said.
“I couldn’t be more happy and I’m definitely surprised. This was definitely not planned.”
Bencic was ranked 421 in the world at the start of the season but has climbed to 13 and is projected to rise even higher after her Tokyo win.
It gave her the 10th WTA title of her career and came 10 years after she last appeared in the Pan Pacific final, where she lost to Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska.
Bencic won Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021. She said she was not sure when she launched her comeback if she would be able to return to the upper echelons of tennis.
Her performance at the Australian Open, where she beat former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka on the way to the last 16, convinced her to continue.
“It’s hard work but it’s a lot of self-belief and a lot of mental belief as well,” said Bencic, who reached a career-high ranking of four in February 2020.
“I’m really happy to have this confirmation with myself that I’m able to try to even beat my best ranking from before.”
