By Shrivathsa Sridhar
PARIS, June 7 (Reuters) - Alexander Zverev finally shattered the barrier between himself and Grand Slam glory by grinding down a stubborn Flavio Cobolli 6-1 4-6 6-4 6-7(5) 6-1 in the French Open final on Sunday to lift his maiden major trophy at Roland Garros.
After falling three times at the final hurdle, including in Paris two years ago, Zverev capped a relentless run by becoming the first German man to win a major title since Boris Becker's Australian Open triumph three decades
ago.
With the sun shining down on Court Philippe Chatrier, Zverev broke Cobolli with a backhand shot that pinged off the Italian's orange-framed racket, and he tightened his grip further to wrap up the opening set with a forehand winner down the middle.
Cobolli fired himself up and produced stunning shot-making to break in the seventh game of the next set and then drew level with a confident hold, as the centre court crowd whipped up a soccer-like atmosphere for the former AS Roma academy player.
Those voices soon fell silent deep in the third set as 10th seed Cobolli struck a forehand into the net to gift Zverev a set point, and the German promptly regained the advantage thanks to another unforced error.
A spell of passive play from Zverev meant that he was broken twice in the fourth set, but the German dialled up the intensity to go level at 5-5, only to crack under pressure in the tiebreak as Cobolli fired a forehand rocket to force a decider.
With the closing stages of the contest lacking the quality of last year's epic between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, Zverev edged in front and used all his experience to finally earn his long-awaited crown.
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar and Julien Pretot; Editing by Pritha Sarkar)
