Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo let an early opening slip away Friday as top seed Alexander Zverev fought back from a set down to win 5-7, 6-0, 6-2 and reach the semifinals of the BMW Open in Munich. The comeback sent the German through to a last-four meeting with Italy’s Flavio Cobolli and ended Cerundolo’s run at the clay-court event.
Cerundolo had looked in command after turning around a wild opening set. Zverev surged ahead and served for a 5-1 lead, but the Argentine flipped the match with a sharp stretch of returning and baseline pressure, reeling off the set and briefly silencing the home crowd.
That momentum vanished quickly in the second set. Backed by the Munich crowd, Zverev reset the match with a dominant response, then carried that control into the decider as Cerundolo struggled to hold off the defending champion’s pressure on return. ATP stats showed Zverev converted seven of his 12 break-point chances in the two-hour, 15-minute quarterfinal.
The result carried extra weight for Zverev because Cerundolo had previously been a problem for him on clay. Zverev had lost his first three tour-level meetings with the Argentine, all on the surface, before finally breaking through on Friday to improve to 5-3 overall in their head-to-head series. “Definitely happy to get the win today against Francisco, for the first time on clay,” Zverev said after the match.
For Cerundolo, the defeat was a missed chance to push deeper into one of the key ATP events of the early clay swing. Instead, Zverev moves on in search of a record fourth Munich title after earlier triumphs in 2017, 2018 and 2025. Cobolli, meanwhile, advanced to the semifinals by beating Vit Kopriva 6-3, 6-2.
The other semifinal will feature second seed Ben Shelton against Slovakia’s Alex Molcan. Shelton stayed alive by beating Brazilian teenager Joao Fonseca 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, while Molcan defeated Denis Shapovalov 6-4, 6-4.
