Remarkable interview
Zverev surprises with tough admissions
05/05/2022 10:07 am
Keep your nerves, sense of achievement: Olympic tennis champion Alexander Zverev reaches the round of 16 at the Masters in Madrid. The defending champion prevails after a hard fight against the Croatian Marin Cilic and then says remarkable sentences.
Olympic champion Alexander Zverev prevented the next painful opening defeat in a difficult season. The 25-year-old defending champion turned the game against Croatian Marin Cilic after losing the first set at the Masters tournament in Madrid and won 4: 6, 6: 4, 6: 4. In the round of 16, Zverev meets the Italian Lorenzo Musetti at the clay court event, which is endowed with 6.74 million euros.
At the tournament in Munich, Zverev failed directly in the round of 16. “I’m happy about this win,” said Zverev on Sky and, when asked, pointed out that the tension in Madrid was different than at the home tournament. “Everyone here is happy to see Rafa (Nadal) and Alcaraz. In Munich, the tournament is structured in such a way that I should go far. You can’t compare it like that.” More impressive, however, were the honest words that Germany’s tennis superstar chose after the duel.
Not happy with current status
He is happy that he was once again able to win a match on his “favourite place” in Madrid and that he is “getting along well” again at the Spanish level,” Zverev explained in an interview with the “Tennis Channel”. The path that his career has taken in recent months is apparently anything but satisfactory for Zverev. “I’m not happy with the status I currently have as a tennis player. But I’m where I am,” admits the native of Hamburg and specifies: “I have to deal with a lot of things that don’t necessarily have anything to do with tennis I hope I can put my full focus on tennis again to become a better player again.”
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, on the tennis court, but also outside. But there are always reasons why mistakes happen. Everything in life happens for a reason,” continued the 25-year-old. The most important thing, however, is “that you learn from your mistakes”.
The past few years have been tough for Zverev. In 2020, pictures appeared that showed him at a party in his adopted home of Monte Carlo, at a time when Zverev said he should have been in corona quarantine. Since 2020, there have been allegations of domestic violence from Zverev’s ex-girlfriend Olga Sharypova, the relationship with ex-partner Brenda Patea, with whom Zverev has a daughter, is at least tense.
The Olympic victory in 2021 seemed to be able to turn things around briefly, but at the latest when Zverev insulted and attacked a referee in Acapulco, his extremely thin nerves were revealed once again. Zverev now also emphasizes to the “Tennis Channel” that it is urgently time for a real turnaround: “The career of a tennis player is limited in time. When you are young, you think: ‘Oh, I still have enough time, I’m more of a hunter than a hunted. That has changed. From now on, I should devote all my concentration to tennis,” says number three in the world.