I could barely move - Zverev considered retiring in Thiem thrashing

Alexander Zverev was off for a scan after picking up an early injury in his defeat to Dominic Thiem at Roland Garros.

Published : Jun 06, 2018 17:15 IST

Alexander Zverev thought about retiring during his French Open quarterfinal hammering at the hands of Dominic Thiem as he "could barely move."

The second seed's first appearance in the last eight of a Grand Slam ended in disappointment, as he suffered a one-sided defeat on Court Philippe Chatrier. A jaded Zverev felt his left thigh early in the first set before having the area heavily strapped by the trainer during the second.

The German had come through three consecutive five-set matches but his efforts appeared to take a toll, with a scan set to discover the extent of the damage. Asked how serious his injury is, he said: "I don't know. It's all very fresh. I'm going to take an MRI now after I'm done here.

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"Most of the time, with muscle injuries or muscle pulls, you can only see something on an MRI if you take it two or three days after. I'm going to go back home and definitely not do anything and see what it is."

He added:  "The first time I felt a pull was in the fourth game of the first set when we had a few great points, a lot of physical points. I remember I slid one time, and then I felt a muscle pull.

Playing through pain

"I thought, 'Well, okay. I played a lot'. I thought maybe it's just, like, soreness or something that would just go away. I didn't think about it too much. And then each game and each slide, I was getting worse and worse. Middle of the second set, the pain was too much."

Zverev contemplated cutting short the contest, but decided to soldier on. Thiem went on to clinch a 6-4, 6-2, 6-1 triumph to reach the last four in the French capital. "I thought about it [retiring]," Zverev admitted. "I definitely thought about it, but, you know, I didn't want to pull out for the first time of my career in a Grand Slam quarterfinal.

"I knew I was not going to win the match. There was no way for me, [I] could barely move. I couldn't serve. I couldn't really do anything. But I still wanted to finish the match and kind of give the credit to Dominic. He deserves to be in the semifinals."

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