ATP: The Damned Second Year – The Suffering of Young Alexander Zverev

Alexander Zverev won in Indian Wells against Joao Sousa on the racket – and then again he came out on top. Not the first time this season.

When Alexander Zverev last came to Indian Wells that Sunday evening at the Tennis Garden, he didn’t seem excessively grim or bitter. He looked rather helpless, like a man who didn’t know exactly what had happened to him. However, it was not easy to put everything away, this latest of many bitter defeats of the last few months, this largely unpleasantly started tennis year, and the thundering of the backdrop in the Zverev team. In the final set against the Portuguese Joao Sousa in the decisive third set, the world number five Zverev had already led 4:1 in the final set, it should have been an easy exercise for the German.

But because nothing is easy for Zverev in these troubled days, he made the very best possible impossible for Zverev in this work assignment, too, and the 20-year-old from Hamburg lost all five final games to the final 5:7,7:5,4:6 defeat,”that’s damn frustrating,”Zverev said afterwards, and that’s not only true for this day, this game. But somehow also the whole trend of the last time. Anyone who knows the rules of professional tennis could have foreseen that Zverev would be facing a difficult year. A rapid, almost meteoric ascent, as experienced by the Hamburg player in the 2017 season, is usually followed by a demanding, very challenging playing time – to put it mildly.

In the travelling circus, this is often described as a “cursed second year”, meaning the difficulty of consolidating oneself at a high and highest level, coping with increased pressure of expectation and facing up to the tougher competitive situation of colleagues. In addition, there is the task of putting away a physically extremely tough season, with for the first time many matches in the final rounds of top tournaments, with as many matches as never before in a young career. At Zverev, there were 77 appearances in 2017, the last few games he played in mid-November at the ATP World Championships in London. The pause after: Short, extremely short. Not even two weeks. The tennis year 2018 began with little surprise with complications for Zverev, who didn’t seem to be completely relaxed and fresh – for example at the Australian Open, where he lost in the third round against the South Korean rising star Hyeon Chung in the third round.

But in the background, largely unnoticed, something surprising and useless happened – namely a serious clash between Zverev and his prominent coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, the former Grand Slam winner and world number one. Both had described their working relationship in the months before as a kind of dream constellation – to the mutual advantage, to the sporting benefit of Zverev, to gain competence for the coach Ferrero. And then what? A dispute over responsibilities, about professional principles, probably also about power and influence in the Zverev company, about the direction of sport. First held in private, then – very unusually – in public. Normally, those involved in the tennis industry also part with the usual PR phrases, i. e. by mutual agreement and with the best wishes.

But in the Causa Zverev/Ferrero, even the smallest check of a Rosary war continued, with the question as to who was late for training and how often. Or maybe not. Also in Indian Wells the tournament for Zverev began on media day with this question. He said he didn’t know how to come up with this unpunctuality:”I’ve never been late for training” Zverev had created clear conditions when he decided to break up Ferrero. But it could also be seen as a defeat, a setback, an involuntary braking manoeuvre. Ferrero’s approach to helping Zverev achieve greater stability and mental discipline was the right one. The Spaniard is not a man who confuses uncontrolledness with necessary emotionality, he had perhaps also suspected that Zverev needed more control especially in the difficult “second year” – and less slinging, smashed rackets and mental chaos on the court.

Ferrero complained that Zverev had “disregarded the agreed rules”with increasing self-confidence last year, and the Spaniard apparently saw himself as a hopeless one-man fighter against the rest of the Zverev tennis company. None of this is yet a full-blown crisis for Zverev. But he will certainly need an additional, critical, independent voice in the team in this difficult year of 2018, in order to be able to maintain at least some of the terrain he has fought for and exploit his potential to the full. Who could that be? Boris Becker, the old master, cannot and will not be. But there is enough competence on the market, people who dare to say uncomfortable things. Tougher times will only come for Zverev in this season, especially when it comes to defending an enormous cushion of points in last year’s successful tournaments.