World number four Alexander Zverev has reached the eighth-finals at the ATP tournament in Beijing.The 20-year-old from Hamburg won his opening match against the Briton Kyle Edmund 6-3,7-6 (7-3) and will now face Fabio Fognini from Italy.
Zverev is the second seedling in Beijing behind world number one Rafael Nadal (Spain).
Even before his first match, the ATP Zverev team in Beijing had already asked ATP Zverev for a media talk.I learned how to deal with pressure and expectations at an early age,”said Zverev:” The more matches you win, the higher your expectations will be.
It’s nice when big players prophesy me a future as number one, but the way to get there is nothing more than hard work, and every day,”Zverev said.He had become accustomed to listening only to the advice of his inner circle:”My family, my team of trainers, what they say is relevant to me.
One should never stop improving, he said, and that’s the credo of such greats as Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer:”The two best players of all time for me.I hope I can get a little closer to what they’ve achieved someday.”
The year 2017 was a very special one for him, Zverev said,”My game has been more consistent over the past few months, which is certainly something I’ve improved enormously,” and he has lost only a few bad matches:”Of course, it happens again and again that you lose bad matches.But I won a lot of people this year, that’s the point.”