Search for courage in bankruptcy series
“Tennis is not everything” for badly battered Zverev
“Tennis is not everything” for badly battered Zverev
04/13/2025, 4:37 p.m.
Disappointment follows for disappointment: the past few weeks have been really bad for Alexander Zverev. His tennis is not good enough. Now the 27-year-old speaks courage.
Alexander Zverev is the last one who denies that it is currently not going so well for him. Of course, he would not have counter-arguments anyway, most recently he already lost his opening match at the Masters in his adopted home Monte-Carlo. “The last few weeks,” he therefore confesses before the ATP tournament in Munich on Monday, “were a little more difficult”. He therefore looks like he has to encourage himself.
“I believe that I will get out of the phase soon. I think that I can start playing better and better,” says the number one, Zverev, before his opening match against the Frenchman Alexandre Muller, most recently number 39 in the world rankings. He does not want to leave any doubts. “I have,” emphasizes Zverev, “still trust in myself that I will start to play really good tennis to Paris”.
Trust is good, until the beginning of the French Open (May 20) it would also be better if Zverev could strengthen it through results. Since he lost in the final of the Australian Open against the Jannik Sinner, which was closed to Munich, but was blocked because of doping, at six tournaments at the latest in the quarter -finals. But Zverev says: “I am still very confident that I will play well for the next few weeks now and hopefully.”
Tournament series was “a mistake in retrospect”
Paris, adds the 27-year-old, “is still the main focus”-and the first Grand Slam title the big goal. Zverev did not want to comment on conjectures that he could all the time and to cope with his crisis with Boris Becker. “If there is news, I’ll say it. But there is no news.” Becker had stopped several times during the training of Zverev before the tournament in Monte-Carlo started.
For the time being, Zverev tries bravely to present his “phase” as nothing extraordinary. Everything is already there, and in general: “I played the Australian Open final three months ago”, so he will “not forget to play tennis”. However, Zverev now admits, be it “a mistake in retrospect” not to regenerate body and mind after Melbourne, but to immediately play three tournaments in South America.
Because of the crisis, Zverev also missed the chance of displacing the Sinner, which was blocked until May 4th, from rank one in the world rankings, but: no longer to change. And also Zverev emphasizes: “Tennis is important, but tennis is not everything in life. I still go home, just as I would go home with victories. It doesn’t change for me.”
