It wasn’t long ago that Alexander Zverev said sentences that are now being held up to him again. At the end of December, he pointed out that all the big titles of the past season were spread over just three players, Novak Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev – and him. The Serb won the Grand Slam titles in Melbourne, Paris and Wimbledon, the Russian in New York, Zverev won Olympic gold and triumphed at the ATP Finals.
This led to an understandable conclusion for Zverev: “I think next year could be very similar to the second half of 2021.” But because he had also said that previously there had only been talk of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Djokovic and now a new triumvirate was coming, he was interpreted disadvantageously in such a way that he was retiring the sacred dynasty of tennis, the big three said goodbye.
Well, at the end of March, Zverev, fourth in the world rankings, would probably be glad he hadn’t given his critics this verbal template. Of course, it’s easy to smack him in the face with that comparison. Now that it has finally manifested itself in Florida that Zverev will not act in the same way in 2022 as in 2021. He is not playing a bad season, but not a good one either. It’s a strange season for him.
Shoulder your bag and off you go! Alexander Zverev leaves the pitch disappointed.
(Photo: Marta Lavandier / AP)
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On Wednesday evening, Zverev was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the ATP tournament of the Masters series in Miami against the Norwegian Casper Ruud, the result from the point of view of the 24-year-old from Hamburg reflected his fickleness: 3: 6, 6: 1, 3: 6. In the first set he made foolish mistakes, the break Ruuds, when he took the service game from him to 3: 1, he handed it into the net with a weak backhand ball. Even then he looked helplessly in the direction of his supervisor box. In the second set, the capable Zverev returned, taking the initiative more often. He wasn’t bad in the third set, but Ruud increased his level, that was enough, and even the show was better on the night of the world rankings: he casually let a ball that flew high after a point flop directly into the side pocket of his shorts. Zverev was not in the mood for such tricks. He looked like he was just working through this match.
“I hope my form comes back,” said Zverev – he hoped in vain
The strange thing for Zverev is that since the beginning of January he has often been at the center of debates about when he will win his first Grand Slam trophy and become number one in the world rankings – unfortunately his results have not matched since then to these discussions, which weighed on him, as he admitted after his failure at the Australian Open. He was not free, blocked, he revealed after the round of 16 defeat against Canadian Denis Shapovalov. He was only missing four wins in Melbourne to be number one in February. Although he had said at the time: “There are a thousand mathematical gimmicks, but it is not yet the time to think about them.” The only problem: at that moment he was already thinking about this topic. A little devilish cycle in the head and a well-known phenomenon in tennis: If you start pondering at the wrong moment, you can get off track.
Significantly, Zverev’s season has rumbled on since then. In Montpellier, at a smaller ATP tournament, he confidently reached the final, but lost to Kazakh Alexander Bublik. In Acapulco, his Tour-fined racquet attack on the umpire’s chair. The spontaneous decision to help the German Davis Cup team in Rio, which he managed to do with two individual wins. Then again: early defeat in Indian Wells against the American Tommy Paul, three reasonable wins in Miami and the thought: “I hope my form comes back.” She didn’t answer. Rather, Zverev no longer looked like the courageous gold hunter from Tokyo against Ruud, but like a seeker of himself.
This impression was also underpinned by the fact that he had surprisingly and without prior notice brought a new coach to the team in Miami. Sergi Bruguera, who won the French Open in 1993 and 1994 and built up a renowned tennis academy in Barcelona, mentored him on a trial basis. Zverev had left open whether the cooperation would continue at the tournaments in Europe that followed – in any case, as this incident expressed, he was working on ways to get out of his strange spiral in which he was stuck. What is unusual about Bruguera’s commitment is that the 51-year-old is the third Spaniard that Zverev is now consulting; previously Juan Carlos Ferrero and David Ferrer had tried their luck. The employment relationship with Ferrero ended ugly with mutual accusations, Ferrer stopped for family reasons.
The fact that there is a lot to process internally in Zverev could be a starting point for whichever coach. In Rio, Zverev announced that his misconduct in Acapulco was quite preoccupying for him. “That was probably the biggest mistake of my tennis career,” he said thoughtfully: “At the end of the day I hope people can forgive me and understand that there is a lot of mental pressure and things happen that people don’t even see and that we are all human. It’s not easy for me.”
After all, he is going on a debate for the time being. When he hits the Monte Carlo Masters in the near future, he can’t become number one in the world. Perhaps this perspective has a liberating effect on him.
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