Alexander Zverev has set himself ambitious goals for his first appearance at the ATP World Tour Finals. The 20-year-old Hamburg resident wants to raise the trophy in London.
He can’t help it. He always wants to win. Tennis, anyway. But even if Alexander Zverev is not on one of the big Centre Courts, he has to win.”It’s just in me. It’s been like that ever since I was a little kid,”says Zverev,”Playstation, basketball, dice. I wanted to win.” And then he says, with an implied smile,”If you want to be friends with me, you better lose against me.” Pure irony? Or a hint of truth?
Zverev, that gangly 1.98-meter-boy from Hamburg, is just the hottest thing in the tennis world. When the tennis season began, it was still a promise for the future, one that the professional trade union ATP centrally promoted in its marketing campaign for NextGen, the next generation of this sport.
But the giant, who is only called “Sascha”, is ahead of the people from his own company and time, he is already a great one in the present. And instead of in Milan, this Zverev will now be playing in London on Sunday to win the big pot for the ATP World Cup. Against the big boys, against his idols. Roger Federer is one of them and Zverev meets him in his group “I want to play for the title”, says Zverev.
Zverev’s breakthrough in world tennis began at the end of May in Foro Italico in Rome, when he beat a certain Novak Djokovic at the Masters tournament there, and Alexander the Great even called the FAZ rapturously over the 20-year-old youngster. According to legend Boris Becker, Zverev is not yet ready “to be right at the top of the world rankings, but he has all the prerequisites for making it a not so distant day”:
“Prior to this championship in London, Zverev has only two players left in the world rankings, Nadal and Federer. He is now number 3, and so is the player who experienced the most notable advancement in this series. And he is the first German player since Rainer Schüttler in 2003 to participate in the World Cup.
There were amazing highs in 2017, but also some lows, it is quite natural in this early stage of a professional career, fluctuations, setbacks. Zverev experienced it quite drastically. After his triumphant moment in Rome, he was already considered a secret favourite for the French Open, as a possible sand court king of Paris. But what came up was the bitter failure in round one against a veteran of the travelling circus, the Spaniard Fernando Verdasco.
The 20-year-old also had to concede his early retirement at the US Open, against the Croatian generation colleague Borna Coric. Only in Wimbledon did he enter the second Grand Slam week. He himself knows that his performance with the Majors was the flaw in his otherwise outstanding 2017 testimony,”There is still room for improvement,”he says.
Zverev has changed rapidly in recent years – and then again in the last few months, in which he has experienced an almost unchecked rise in his job. Zverev has calmed down on the Centre Court, he rests more in himself, he’s just become safer,”I’ve confirmed to myself that I really can play with the big players, and even defeat them,”he says,”last year everything stabilized, I won more, I trusted myself more, I found another sovereignty.”.
What he says and how he says it now points to a new maturity – someone who has quickly learned to assert himself in his complicated professional sport. Zverev knows what he has to do, how and with whom to be successful, he has proven it with his successful transfer from junior to adult tennis. And also with the choice of his team, last but not least with the decision to enlist former No. 1 man Juan Carlos Ferrero as another coach:”You have to learn quickly, otherwise you’ll lose your game,”says Zverev, who was once also the best junior player in the world.
What has spurred his upswing is the new balance he has found between his passionate passion and iron match control. Zverev has it all: wit and discipline, power and precision, fire and ice.”I’m not freaking out anymore. I have a much better grip on myself,”says Zverev. But he doesn’t have any emotion or action – now and probably never quite so:
“If a player is completely calm and never says anything, then I have the feeling that he doesn’t care about his job,”he says,”I have to unload my anger, and a racket has to be put in it. I live and love this sport with every fibre in my body.”
And how does he put his defeats away, now that he is already one of the leading figures in the industry? Better or worse than before? Zverev says there’s a “subtle difference.” If he played badly, very badly,”I go directly to training, charge me work. If he loses scarcely and unhappily, he wants to stay for himself:”I don’t talk to anyone either. My family knows that, they leave me alone in such moments.”
But he also finds them fascinating, these ups and downs that he has to cope with, which constantly challenge him:”Tennis has this magic, that you have to deal with so much yourself. And because tennis is such a wonderful test for him, he likes to give everything over and over again:” There has never been a day when I’ve made my work listless. Tennis at this level only works if you invest 100 percent every second. Without restrictions, without compromises.”
Mother, father, brother, brother, himself – all Zverevs were and are professional tennis players. But Sascha, the youngest and most talented, never felt the pressure, the obligation to play tennis. As a teenager he also played football, became youth champion with his hockey club. When he was 12 years old, he decided to play tennis on his own:
“I’ve never regretted it,”he says,”it’s the sport that suits me,” to someone who last but not least relies on himself, who lives his own power on the Centre Court. Zverev, the successful man, lives and loves tennis:”With every fibre in my body,”he says.
There is no time for a life apart from tennis, such as a girlfriend. Every now and then Zverev also goes to the obligatory players’ parties, he also celebrates with them, but doesn’t drink alcohol:”I’m a pretty relaxed guy, apart from tennis” But even more important to him is the next morning, work after work:”Then I’m the first one on the training ground”.