In the middle of the longest injury break of his career, Olympic tennis champion Alexander Zverev has achieved the best placement of his career so far.
In the world rankings published on Monday, the 25-year-old is in second place. Only the Russian Daniil Medvedev, who replaced the Serb Novak Djokovic at the top, still ranks ahead of Zverev.
The reason for the change at the top is the fact that Djokovic lost 2,000 points for winning the French Open last year. The second Grand Slam tournament of the season took place a week later in 2021. This year Djokovic had already failed in Paris in the quarterfinals.
“If you have the most points in the ranking over the last 52 weeks, then you deserve to be up there. That’s fair. The numbers don’t lie,” said Medvedev in Halle, where the Russian is at the start this week is. For the first time since November 2003, none of the Big Three – i.e. Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer – is in the top two places.
Otte climbs to 51st place
Zverev will not be very happy about second place. Born in Hamburg, he tore all the collateral ligaments in his right foot in the semifinals of the French Open against eventual winner Rafael Nadal and has already had an operation. Zverev will therefore miss the lawn classic in Wimbledon (June 27 to July 10). The German number one is hoping for a comeback at the US Open (August 29 to September 11).
After reaching the semi-finals at the Weissenhof in Stuttgart, Oscar Otte climbed to 51st place. This is also the highest position in the world rankings for the man from Cologne.