“Great champions don’t do it”
Legend sees Zverev as number 1, but…
01/26/2022, 08:28 am
Alexander Zverev had traveled to Australia to ideally win his first Grand Slam title and thus become number 1 in the tennis world. It turned out differently. This feeds new doubts about the champion format of the best German tennis player, who is at odds with himself.
Former tennis pro Mats Wilander considers Alexander Zverev to be the likely future number one in the world despite the early exit from the Australian Open. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Alexander Zverev was at the top,” said the 57-year-old Swede of “Sport Bild” when asked who he would bet on as the world number one in five years. Zverev is his first choice: “He has the serve, the determination and the will to work. Therefore, he will learn to play well on all surfaces, in all Grand Slams.” Wilander himself won seven Grand Slam tournaments and led the world rankings for 20 weeks.
As a title candidate, Zverev was eliminated in the round of 16 of the Australian Open last Sunday. The 24-year-old from Hamburg must be “more self-confident” and should concentrate on “playing more constantly aggressively,” said former world number one Wilander: “With his hard serve and his basic strokes, he can sweep people off the field. But if that’s not the case when he does, he backs away voluntarily, stands further back and becomes too passive. Big champions don’t do that!”
“Something happened”
Zverev had lost 3: 6, 6: 7 (5: 7), 3: 6 against the Canadian Dennis Shapovalov, who was by no means unleashed, and surprised with a weak, discouraged, uninspired performance. “He has to think about what happened there,” tennis legend Boris Becker then asked Eurosport: “He was bursting with self-confidence before, but something happened in Australia in these weeks.”
Zverev himself was completely at a loss after his “tough smack” (Becker): “I will still do everything I can to lift the Grand Slam trophy at some point,” said the Olympic champion: “At the moment it’s silly, of course, talking about it because I just lost in the fourth round of the Australian Open as the number three seed, so I’m a long way from that right now.” He has to think about himself, he said: “I came here with the aim of winning and maybe becoming number one. But if I play like that, I don’t deserve it. It’s that simple.”
Zverev didn’t have an explanation – and he didn’t look for any excuses either: “At the end of the day it just wasn’t good enough,” he said. “I already felt extremely slow, I didn’t feel fresh.” He could “sit here now and say: ‘I have a cold and something else.’ But no, I’m always very honest. I don’t have anything. I’ve just had a shitty week, to be honest.”
According to his brother and manager Mischa, Zverev had failed in meeting his own expectations: “He put himself under too much pressure, he couldn’t cope,” said the 34-year-old from the “Bild” newspaper.