“If you ask me if I’m surprised, yes, a little bit of course," Sinner said in his post-match press conference. "But at the end of the day it’s tennis and you always try to do your best, some tournaments you play well, some tournaments you don’t play well. It’s great to be in the quarter-finals that’s for sure.”
With the victory, Sinner became the first male player to reach the quarter-finals on his Roland-Garros debut since Nadal in 2005. Most 19-year-olds would be bouncing off the walls with a result like that, but not Sinner.
“I don’t watch that much about these kinds of records,” he said. “At the end of the day you want to play well every match, trying to win every match.”
Zverev, attempting to shake off the pain of a heartbreaking loss from two-sets-to-love up in last month’s US Open final against Dominic Thiem, struggled physically during the match and later told reporters that he had taken ill the day before.
“What can I say?” said the German. “I'm completely sick. I can't really breathe, as you can hear by my voice. I think that had a little bit of an effect on the match today.”