Alexander Zverev has admitted to being ill-prepared for the match after his Wimbledon second round win over Japanese ‘lucky loser’ Yosuke Watanuki.
“I had a bit of a neck on my box,” nobody bothered to get advance information about the opponent, he said after the 6: 4, 5: 7, 6: 2, 6: 2 against the number 116 in the world rankings.
To Zverev’s surprise, the Wimbledon debutant turned out to be a serve giant with a rather small height of 1.80 meters. However, he and everyone else only noticed that “when four aces flew past me at a speed of 320,” said Zverev with a grin.
Nothing was discussed before the match, “everyone leaned back a bit,” he added with a sardonic undertone.
Against Zverev, Watanuki beat 17 aces, and he was also successful with the second serve. A quick look at the statistics of the Japanese player’s first-round victory would have been enough to prepare: In the five-set match against Marc-Andrea Hüsler from Switzerland, he scored 22 aces.
Tobias Kamke would be responsible for observing opponents – however, Zverev’s training partner is currently busy in the tennis Bundesliga.