Alexander Zverev relentlessly went to court after the lost final. His statements look deep.
Christoph Cöln reports from Melbourne
Alexander Zverev is a fantastic tennis player. And he is a friendly person, he demonstrated that at this year’s Australian Open with almost every appearance. His moody on-court interviews after the matches were celebrated by the fans and achieved almost cult status. When he then protected tennis superstar Novak Djoković against the boos of parts of the audience after his injury-related departure in the semi-finals, he received thundering scene applause.
The 27-year-old Hamburger has made many friends in Australia. He didn’t get one title again. For the 36th time, Zverev’s attempt to finally crown his career with a big title has failed. The analysts will probably now go into speculation whether this highly gifted two-meter man will ever add one of those pompous Grand slam trophies to his trophy cabinet in which his name has been engraved. Or whether “Sascha” remains unfinished despite 23 tournaments won so far.
Until the final, Zverev had also promoted his tennis for himself and had rightly moved into the final. But against the Italian Jannik Sinner he looked like a bicycle hose from the start, from which the air slowly escapes. He merged, cheered on the Center Court loudly, even briefly gave hope to turn the match in the second set. But in the end everything was in vain, nothing worked anymore.
After the match, he was sitting on his bench, he would have loved to get away. Nevertheless, he stayed in the glaring rubble, did not ran like Aryna Sabalenka after her surprising defeat in the women’s final the day before. Zverev showed size in one of the most painful hours of his career.
At the press conference afterwards, his despair was revealed. “He was superior in all matters today, he played me completely,” he said about Sinner. “I opened better, but that’s it. He does everything better than me. Then Zverev listed in a relentless detail analysis what exactly the Italian does better than he did. It was almost a kind of self -dismantling.
One could easily have thought that a hopelessly overwhelmed qualifier speaks that failed in the first round against the top favorite. In fact, the world ranking and the world ranking second were faced with each other in the final. The two only separates one place. If you listened to Zverev, it was more of a class difference. He was honestly desperate.
“I do everything, I work as hard as it is somehow. I also do everything I can away from the course. But I lost smooth here in three sets. These are the facts,” he said. But the fact is that Zverev can beat every player on a good day. When it matters, he regularly misses these days. Is that just a lack of Fortune?
Hardly. Rather a weakness in posture. Even before the final, Zverev had been unnecessarily hard to go to court. After the game against Tommy Paul, he said that he “stole the first two sentences”. In fact, he had not convinced the American at the beginning, but still brought the tiebreaks home safely. A quality that only have top players.
Even after the progress in the semi -finals against Djoković – Zverev had brilliantly won the first set after hard struggle before the Serb gave up – he said that he finally needed luck to win a title. This fatalism that comes from the dress from Vager hope does not match the mindset of a Grand Slam winner. Zverev does not seem to have a quality problem, but rather a mentality problem.
“I don’t want to end my career as the best player ever who never won a Grand Slam,” he said on Sunday. He doesn’t have to. He has to continue working and believe in himself, then he can beat everyone. Also in the final of a Grand Slam.