Jordan Thompson pulled off a surprising win today at the Kinoshita Group Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo today by beating 3rd seed Alexander Zverev 6-3, 6-4. Having met only once before when Zverev won, Thompson has seen a recent steady rise in the ATP ranking to compete as the number 50 rank at the US Open.

At the post match press conference Zverev was almost lost for words “I played horribly today but Jordan played well and was serving well. I just played a bad match and there is nothing else to say about it”.

Thompson’s serve proved to be a distinct advantage over Zverev winning 6 aces against Zverev’s two. He did not produce any double faults while Zverev had 3 and with a particularly low 63% of 1st serves won, Thompson had the opening he was looking for.

Thompson’s play style was aggressive. He stepped up whenever he saw the opportunity to play at the net. He broke Zverev serve 3 times to take the lead very early in the first set giving him a 4-1 lead.

The second set saw a much more aggressive Zverev emerge and he got the early break leaving Thompson 0-2 down when Thompson missed a shot which clipped the net and flew past him. However, Zverev clearly had some frustration building in the second game. That frustration manifested itself with Thompson breaking back in the 3rd game to get back to 1-2 on serve. A head-to-head at the net was finally taken by Thompson and Zverev seemed to be increasingly frustrated.

The final blow was Zverev missing a straightforward net shot to give Thompson his first attempt at break point which he finally carried through two points later when Zverev uncharacteristically hit his backhand wide to give Thompson a 5-4 lead. The longest rally of the match came when Zverev was 15-30 down in the 10th game trying to claw back the loss in a last ditch effort to turn the match around but Thompson prevailed to give himself match point. A final strong serve by Thompson sealed his fate and gave him his biggest career victory to date beating 3rd seed Zverev.