Mumbai, Sept. 15 -- Maybe it was still a bit of jetlag, as Alexander Zverev had joked earlier about all those late-night finishes from the first week. Zverev didn't know he had won. When it belatedly dawned upon him, a good few seconds after the championship point was done even as he zoned in towards his return position, he spread his arms out and laughed. Zverev had also laughed in the first week at how bad - in his own words - he had been playing. He went from terrible to the title in a week, while still laughing. He went from being two points away from a first-round crash to a second Grand Slam capture. He went from making the US Open a stage of scars in 2020 to one of success in 2026. The German top seed defeated 8th seed Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6(2), 5-7, 6-2 on Sunday, ensuring the American wait for a first male major winner since Andy Roddick in 2003 only got longer. For the 29-year-old French Open and now US Open champion, that capped off a commanding Slam season. Zverev is only the second man from Germany, after Boris Becker (1989), to win two singles Slam titles in the same season in the Open era. His 25 match wins in Slams this year, with a final at Wimbledon and semi-final at Australian Open, are the most by a German male in history. His two triumphs in the last three Slams offset four final near-misses, including the first at the 2020 US Open. "We went 30 years without winning a Grand Slam title, and now we won two within three months," Zverev told his team on court. "God has seen how hard we worked, how much we suffered, how much pain we went through."Competing with type 1 diabetes, Zverev returned from a serious ankle surgery in 2022, has had domestic abuse allegations by two former partners (which he denies), and played with the nearly-man tag for five years after three finals and six semi-finals at Slams in that period....