After he had to give up in two true tennis thrillers in the final of the US Open 2020 and the French Open 2024, Alexander Zverev was victims of a power demonstration of the Italian world ranking on Sunday at the Australian Open 2025 in the third Grand Slam final of his career. Sinner. The sting of the bankruptcy was therefore no less deep, also because Zverev knows that time is running away.
“Today I lost in three sets. That is a fact that I lost a fact today. I lost to Jannik in three sets,” Alexander Zverev tried to flee in excuses after his clear defeat in the final of the Australian Open also said that Jannik Sinner “completely exceeded” him and pushed a sentence that resembles a look into his soul: “I don’t want to end my career as one of the greatest players ever without a Grand Slam title- That is certain.
But that’s not all: he and his team would try to correct everything, but he is simply “not good enough – that is that simple,” Zverev said, once again received sympathy and laughs for the statement in Melbourne, but let deep at the same time look. The fact that his father and trainer underpinned the words with applause fits into the picture.
With all open and understandable resignation, the end of Zverev’s emotional interview is also remarkable. Even if he did not know whether he was ever able to win the title, he would come back and try it further. In short: Even if the disappointment predominates, the greed after the redeeming Grand Slam title continues to drift the Germans-and there is certainly evidence that Zverev should not rightly be discouraged.
Zverev’s prominent “fellow sufferers”
With two titles at the ATP finals and winning the Olympic gold medal at the summer games in Beijing, Hamburg has long since proven that he can also keep the upper hand in the very big finals that Zverev now reached the final for three out of four Grand Slams And that braked in different years and in between from injuries, also proves that it is constant world class.
Zverev should be even more hope his few, but quite prominent “fellow sufferers”. The eternal surcharge giant Goran Ivanisevic also only ended his Grand Slam curse on the fourth attempt when he was on his first major success with a legendary Striptease celebrated.
Andre Agassi also suffered three final defeats before the knot burst at one of the world’s four biggest tournaments. And also Andy Murray and Dominic Thiem needed three endgame bankruptcy to redemption. The fact that Thiem celebrated his title at the US Open 2020 against Zverev, who won the first two sentences and at times only separated two points from the match profit, is on a different sheet.
But that’s not all: when the legendary Ivan Lendl, in 1984 at the French Open, celebrated the first of his eight individual successes in a Grand Slam, he had previously lost four finals.
French Open offer the next chance of redemption
No wonder that Zverev emphasized after the recent disillusionment in Melbourne, “The focus” is now “on Roland Garros”, where he is striving for in his 36th Grand Slam participation and his first title. Zverev has already proven impressively that the sand in Paris has it, Sinner also seems more vulnerable on the red ashes than on Hard Court.
In the age of 28 and in view of the fact that behind the young dominators Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, the next generation around the Czech Jakub Mensik, Joao Fonseca from Brazil or Learner Tien from the United States, the path becomes a redeeming title Furthermore, a rocky one – the proof that he is good enough for the really big coup can still be trusted.