Alexander Zverev rallied from one set down to beat Matteo Arnaldi 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 6-2 in the third round at the National Bank Open in Toronto. Zverev won his milestone 500th ATP match win. Zverev becomes the 57th player in the Open Era to reach 500th career wins.
Zverev, who won the Canadian Open title in 2017, broke serve in the fifth game of the first set to take a 4-2 lead and held two more break points that would have earned him a 5-2 lead. Arnaldi broke back in the eighth game to draw level to 4-4. Zverev saved two set points to hold serve at deuce for 5-5. Arnaldi earned the only mini-break to win the tie-break 7-5 after 81 minutes.
Zverev broke serve in the second game to race out to a 3-0 lead and held his next service games to win the second set 6-3. The German player won five consecutive games from 1-2 down. He closed out the match after 2 hours and 46 minutes when Arnaldi hit his backhand into the net.
Zverev set up a fourth round match against number 14 seed Francisco Cerundolo, who beat his compatriot Tomas Martin Etcheverry 6-3 6-4.
Cerundolo leads 3-0 in his head-to-head matches against Zverev. “It’s a great achievement. There’s not a lot of players that reached that milestone. Of course I still want 500 more hopefully to come, and maybe even more! When you start your career, you wish to play on Tour, you wish to have a successful career, win as many matches as possible. I think 500 is definitely a milestone, and I’m happy about that. It’s special for sure. But at the end of the day, nothing changes for me. I’ve still got to do the work, I’ve still got to try and keep improving and try to win another 500”, said Zverev.
