Second seed Alexander Zverev beat the 26th seed Jakub Mensik in four sets on Friday to advance to the men's singles final at the French Open in Paris where he will play 10th seed Flavio Cobolli.
Zverev won 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 in just under three hours to progress to his second final at the Stade Roland Garros in three years.
In 2024, the 29-year-old German lost to Carlos Alcaraz in the final and last year he went down to Novak Djokovic in the quarter-finals.
With Alcaraz missing due to injury, Djokovic dispatched and top seed Jannik Sinner out in a freak result in the second round, Zverev has carried the pressure of favourite for most of the tournament.
He wore the mantle well in the opening exchanges with his 20-year-old opponent who had disposed of the eighth seed Alex de Minaur in the third round as well as the 11th seed Andrey Rublev on the way to his first semi-final at a Grand Slam.
Even opening set
It was level pegging in the opening set until a fourth backhand winner provided Zverev with a break point.
He capitalised to give himself the chance to serve for the opener after 57 minutes. The German wrapped it up on the hour mark on the back of two crunching forehand winners and his third ace of the set.
Zverev took Mensik's service game to lead 2-1 in the second set as the Czech appeared to be running out of ideas.
His fifth double fault gave Zverev a 5-2 lead and with minimal effort, Zverev wrapped up his next service game to collect the second set 6-2 after 97 minutes of play.
Mensik, following a medical time out at the start of the third set, rallied and surged into a 5-2 lead. Zverev stopped the rot but Mensik claimed the set 6-3 courtesy of a drop shot.
Zverev took the first three games of the fourth set and never relinquished his advantage.
He won it 6-3 and the match to set up a Sunday final against either the 10th seed Flavio Cobolli or Matteo Rinaldi.
"It's amazing how Jakub has been playing over the past two weeks," said Zverev in his post-match on-court interview.
"He has beaten some great players and I knew it would be my toughest challenge so far. But I managed and I won. I'm happy."
First Grand Slam tournament final
Cobolli, 24, moved into his first final at a Grand Slam tournament following the withdrawal due to illness of fellow Italian Matteo Arnaldi before their semi-final.
"It's not what I wanted to do," Arnaldi told reporters on Friday.
"I started to feel unwell on Thursday and then at dinner I started to feel so-so in my stomach and I woke up at 1am and started vomiting.
"It made no sense to play, out of respect for him [Cobolli]. It wouldn't have been a good match."
"It was tough," Cobolli said. "When he came to me with the news that he could not play, I almost cried. I have a lot of respect for him and he's an inspiration for a lot of us."
