Alexander Zverev collapsed to an improbable defeat to Luciano Darderi at the 2026 Italian Open after holding a commanding lead and squandering four match points.<\/p>\n
The world No 3 fell 6-1, 6-7(10), 0-6 to world No 20 Darderi in a rollercoaster last 16 contest at the Masters 1000 tournament in Rome.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old German led 6-1, 5-3 against Darderi, who appeared to be struggling physically, but he failed to serve the match out at 5-4 in the second set.<\/p>\n
In a dramatic second set tiebreak, Zverev<\/a> was unable to convert match points at 6-5, 8-7, 9-8 and 10-9 before Darderi took his first set point to force a decider.<\/p>\n Zverev then fell apart in the third set as his 24-year-old Italian opponent stormed to the finish line in front of a vociferous crowd on BNP Paribas Arena at the Foro Italico.<\/p>\n In his on-court interview with Tennis TV, Darderi was asked how he won the match.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know yet. It was really tough match. At the beginning, I was not feeling really good physically,\u201d Darderi said.<\/p>\n \u2018Alexander Zverev won\u2019t be able to say he did everything he could to win a Grand Slam\u2019<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Alexander Zverev ranks Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz on clay after his controversial comments<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as\u00a0<\/span>a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBut in the second set, I\u2019m sure I was really lucky because he gave me a lot of games. In the 5-3 in the second set, I was done.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I was having a small chance in the second set that he gave me on the 5-4. So I take it. The tiebreak was a lot of pressure, for me, for him.<\/p>\n \u201cI know it\u2019s not easy to play here, because at the beginning, always I have a lot of nerves every match. But I think it\u2019s really nice because it was a real fight mentally against me, and this is the most important thing today.\u201d<\/p>\n On the crowd, Darderi added: \u201cI won because of them, because you can\u2019t give up here. It\u2019s amazing that the crowd helped me a lot on every point.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I just have to say thank you to everybody, and it\u2019s a dream being here in the quarter-finals because it\u2019s the tournament of my life here. In Italy, we have just one big tournament, and [to] make, for the moment, quarter-finals here on the first time, is crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Darderi\u2019s victory against Zverev was his first-ever win against a top 10 player.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I think I have the level to beat anyone, but tennis is like this; you can beat Sascha today and then you can lose against the 50 in the world. This is tennis,\u201d Darderi said.<\/p>\n \u201cSascha is an amazing player, he has a lot of big achievements in tennis. So I have a lot of respect for him. He\u2019s No 3 in the world.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just one match, we have to keep working.\u201d<\/p>\n Darderi has climbed three places to a projected new career-high ranking of 17th in the Live ATP Rankings.<\/p>\n The Italian will face Rafael Jodar in the quarter-finals in Rome.<\/p>\n READ NEXT: What is Novak Djokovic\u2019s ranking after his loss at the Italian Open?<\/a> The post Italian Open: Alexander Zverev\u2019s opponent says \u2018he gave me a lot of games\u2019 after German\u2019s shock collapse<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alexander Zverev collapsed to an improbable defeat to Luciano Darderi at the 2026 Italian Open after holding a commanding lead and squandering four match points. The world No 3 fell 6-1, 6-7(10), 0-6 to world No 20 Darderi in a rollercoaster last 16 contest at the Masters 1000 tournament in Rome. The 28-year-old German led […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ATP Tour News<\/h2>\n
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