De Minaur beats Zverev in Vienna, faces Alcaraz in final

Alex de Minaur beat the top seed Alexander Zverev 6-4, 1-6, 7-6(4) in the semi-final of the Erste Bank Open in Vienna on Saturday, 31 October. The match lasted two hours and 30 minutes. It was de Minaur's first win over Zverev outside team events and his fifth overall. Zverev becomes world number one when the rankings are released on Monday, and de Minaur faces Carlos Alcaraz in Sunday's final.

How the match went

De Minaur took the first set 6-4, and Zverev levelled with a dominant second set, 6-1. Zverev broke for a 2-0 lead in the second set and saved six set points before winning it, according to one report, though another says that de Minaur's serve let him down. De Minaur won the deciding tiebreak despite a couple of double faults, including one on his first match point at 6-2, and he won the match on his next chance.

De Minaur hit 25 winners, and he won 64%, or seven of 11, of the points that lasted more than nine shots. Zverev was visibly irritated during the match and protested to the umpire, Arnaud Gabas, over a time violation for bouncing the ball before a serve, and the umpire reversed the sanction.

What de Minaur said

He said that he was super proud of how he handled the situation and that he played a very aggressive deciding tiebreak on his own terms.

Zverev will become the 30th man to rise to world number one on Monday, and his first tournament in the position will be the Paris Masters. He faces Lorenzo Musetti or Hubert Hurkacz there. He still leads the head-to-head with de Minaur 9-5. Before this win, de Minaur's only victories over Zverev had come in early-season team events and the Laver Cup, and he had lost all six of their individual meetings, including at this year's Australian Open.

More from SportsExplore Sports

SportsIndia vs New Zealand 5th T20I: Seifert's 93 and Phillips's 65* give NZ a 7-wicket win; India take series 3-21 Nov 2026 · 4 min read

SportsSouth Africa beat Australia by 176 runs to win Newlands Test and series 2-1; Harmer takes 6-161 Nov 2026 · 2 min read

SportsAnahat Singh, 18, beats eight-time world champion Nour El Sherbini in straight games in California23 Oct 2026 · 4 min read

De Minaur plays Alcaraz in the final at the Wiener Stadthalle, his fourth final of 2026. Alcaraz beat Daniil Medvedev 6-4, 7-6(2) in the other semi-final. De Minaur has lost all six of his previous meetings with Alcaraz. The final is an ATP 500 event, and the result was not known when the reports on the semi-final were published.

The win moved de Minaur back into the top eight qualifiers for the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, ninth in the PIF ATP Live Race to Turin by one report and tenth in the world rankings by another, which puts him in line for the final qualifying spot. He is bidding to qualify for the season-ending event for a third consecutive year. The Paris Masters is the only remaining qualifying event. The finals run from 15 to 22 November in Turin, and Zverev has already qualified.

De Minaur is the fourth player to record 21 or more ATP 500 match wins in a single season since the series began in 2009.

The reports found do not say who won the final, which was played after they were published, or give a full statistical breakdown of the match.