Alexander Zverev advanced to his fifth straight ATP Masters 1000 semifinal after a commanding win at the Mutua Madrid Open.

The two-time champion beat Flavio Cobolli 6-1, 6-4 to register his 25th victory of the season. Zverev surged to a 5-0 lead in the opening set and kept control through the finish, closing the match with a +4 differential from 23 winners and 19 unforced errors. His serve produced 12 aces and a 9.5 serve quality rating.

This semifinal marks the end, for now, of a streak in which Zverev repeatedly crossed paths with Jannik Sinner; this time he avoided that matchup. The run of results stretches back to the 2025 Paris Rolex Masters.

Zverev, who remains No. 3 in the rankings, is seeking his first title since winning in Munich last April. Cobolli had ended Zverev’s chance to retain that Munich crown earlier in the season.

“No revenge, I love Flavio. He’s one of my favorite guys on tour,” insisted Zverev during his ATP Media interview with Ursin Cadereas. “This is sport. Sport can change very quickly. In Munich, he played an amazing match. I didn’t play a very good match. Today, maybe it was the opposite.”

With the victory Zverev, the Hamburg native, now holds 179 clay-court wins, the most by any German male player in the Open Era. Despite that milestone, a stubborn problem remains: he has lost six previous Masters 1000 semifinals and has yet to break that sequence.

“Of course, I need to get past this stage now,” he laughed.

Zverev’s opponent in the Madrid semifinal will be Alexander Blockx. The 21-year-old Belgian, last December’s runner-up at the Next Gen ATP Finals, eliminated the reigning champion Casper Ruud 6-4, 6-4 to reach his first Masters 1000 semifinal.

“I think he has great spirit when he’s on the tennis court. I enjoy watching him play,” commented Zverev.

Mirra Andreeva celebrated her 19th birthday with a milestone week at the Mutua Madrid Open, reaching her first WTA 1000 final of the season and accepting a pair of high heels as a gift.

The 19-year-old, seeded ninth at the Caja Magica and a former Roland Garros semifinalist, beat Hailey Baptiste 6-4, 7-6 (8) in the semifinals. The victory capped a strong clay-court swing that followed a title run in Linz and a semifinal at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix.

“I was really not expecting that gift,” exclaimed Andreeva, who spoke on-court about wanting a new pair of heels after her quarterfinal win, “but my agent Juan [Gerard], he was very thoughtful and he got me a pair of high heels.

“I already have a video in my phone of how I walk in them. I was extremely happy to receive that gift yesterday. I’ll try to go out somewhere maybe next week to wear them and feel pretty.”

Against Baptiste, who had earlier saved six match points to upset world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the quarterfinals, Andreeva was in control for large stretches. Serving for the match at 5-4 she missed an overhead that would have produced match points, then lost three games in a row and faced three set points in the Sudden Death tiebreak before closing out the win.

“I feel like in the first set, especially, I feel like there were at least a couple of games where I didn’t even serve a second serve, so I was trying not to think about it,” Andreeva said. “Because as it always happens, when you just think about how, ‘Oh, I haven’t missed my first serve in a while,’ the first thing you do is miss your serve.”

“Honestly, I feel so much adrenaline inside,” Andreeva said. “I feel like I’m still nervous! Honestly, I’m just so happy that I won and I’m so happy I was able to save so many set points. I was very happy with how I served today, as well. I feel like the serve helped me a lot. I’m just so, so happy, I cannot really find a lot of words to describe how I’m feeling right now.”

Andreeva will await the winner of the second semifinal between Marta Kostyuk and lucky loser Anastasia Potapova. On preparing for that match she said, “I like to watch tennis, but I feel like I want to forget about tennis and do something in my room, watch some TV series, read a book, do something. Conchita will watch. She’s going to do her job well, I hope!”

Anastasia Potapova’s run at the Mutua Madrid Open reads like a study in second chances. After losing in the final qualifying round, she was on a short Spanish break when a late call brought her back to the Caja Magica as a lucky loser roughly 30 minutes before her scheduled first-round match.

“I just let it go,” she said, describing those unexpected days off. “I had beautiful two days off in Madrid. I love Spain. I had good food, my family was here. I was really enjoying it.

“I cannot say that I was preparing for something, I was not at all. But I was trying just to recover and to have some nice days. But maybe that’s the key, you don’t need to be always so zoomed in and so locked in on the tournament. Maybe it’s just a matter of sometimes just to enjoy yourself and enjoy the journey, and maybe that’s how the results can also come.”

The approach produced a breakthrough. The 25-year-old produced back-to-back upsets of Jelena Ostapenko and Elena Rybakina and then survived a testing quarterfinal against former world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova, prevailing 6-1, 6-7 (4), 6-3 to reach her first WTA 1000 semifinal.

“I’ve been given a second chance, and I’ve been using it very good,” she said at her post-match press conference. The match nearly slipped away when Pliskova saved three match points and moved ahead early in the decider.

“I couldn’t handle my nerves,” Potapova admitted, later joking “I needed drama.” She credited encouragement from boyfriend Tallon Greikspoor, audible in the stands, for steadying her when it mattered. “He just told me to shut up, to keep on working, to start working with my legs, and that we are both here together in this match, I’m not just by myself. It just happened at the such important moment, and it gave me a lot of energy.”

Potapova closed out the final five games and booked a place in the semis, a result set to move her back into the world’s Top 40 after a drop to No. 97 earlier this month. I always say, if you got it, maybe you deserved it. So I did work hard. I also, you know, anyone can get a second chance, but how many of those will actually take it? Anastasia Potapova

“I do think it’s a miracle,” she added. “It’s pretty rare when you get the second chance and that you go almost all the way until the end.”