Alexander Zverev’s tennis year, which started brilliantly by reaching the final of the Australian Open 2025, but then offered more setbacks than highlights, was accompanied by plenty of criticism of the 28-year-old’s achievements. This often came from the mouth of the German tennis icon Boris Becker. However, the weighty word of the six-time Grand Slam winner is no longer the measure of things for Zverev himself. The Hamburger now explained that.
“I think he’s relatively unconcerned about me, to be honest. I think he’s looking for attention a bit and he gets it through me. Unfortunately, that’s the case. But I’ve had enough of that now,” explained the world number three in an interview with “Bild am Sonntag”.
“World leaders look different,” criticized Becker “problem child” Zverev, with whom he had a good relationship for a long time, a few days ago in a podcast that he runs together with Andrea Petkovic. In the past few months, Becker had repeatedly made negative statements to the number three in the world rankings.
However, Zverev didn’t mince his words after his increasingly sobering appearances on the tour recently.
“I showed some real shit tennis”
“Of course I didn’t play well in many situations, I showed real bad tennis. As I said: The year is just tough, also in terms of the body. You have the feeling that you’re getting into a good rhythm, finding your tennis a little bit and then have to take a break for two or three weeks, like after the US Open. That’s just difficult,” Zverev once again clearly took responsibility in an interview with “Bild”, but also addressed a point that bothered him about the whole thing Already busy for the year: his health.
Zverev said he had had problems with his elbow throughout the season and was therefore unable to “train his serve properly” and his statistics in this area had “decreased unbelievably”. His back has also been bothering him for a long time. The constant injuries would always throw him out of rhythm.
But Zverev also made it clear that he was hopeful about the near future: “Now there are tournaments that I really like in the hall, with Vienna and Paris, where I won last year. I believe that I can play good tennis there again.”