Alexander Zverev - the go-ahead principle and its consequences
Two matches, two defeats - this is Alexander Zverev's previous record at the ATP Cup in Brisbane. Another consequence of the promotion tour with Roger Federer and the shortened season preparation.
by Jörg Allmeroth
last edit: Jan 06, 2020, 12:03 pm
At least in the infinite vastness of the Internet, he was a real hit, a leader. Wherever you look on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram in the past few days, Alexander Zverev has always been there with his sometimes ghostly inserts from the Brisbane tennis stadium. It was a sad spectacle that the network voyeurs were able to marvel at during the newly created ATP Cup: Zverev furiously chopping a racket, framed by the enthusiastic team supervisors Boris Becker and Michael Kohlmann. Zverev in angry self-talk with a real orgy of double faults. And then Zverev at a bitter premiere, the public abuse of his father Alexander sen. ("Shut up. What are you talking about? You tell me some shit."). Becker, to whom some of this behavior was not entirely alien, but who never exposed his own father in this way, noted a "case for the psychologist." Zverev's form crisis also minimized the chances despite a bumpy 2-1 victory against Greece The Germans' progress at the ATP Cup to finish as one of the two best group times had to be a clear victory in the last group game against Canada on Tuesday.
In any case, one thing was clear after these first few days of the new year: Zverev, the world ranking seventh, had dragged his problems of the 2019 season over into the "twenties" that had just started. The problems of lack of consistency, the problems of an extremely thin nerve costume, the problems, quite tangible, with his serve, the problems of an overly defensive play structure. Normally, tennis professionals like Zverev should appear rested, relaxed and gripping with a positive look ahead to the first time they use a fresh series, but everything at the 22-year-old from Hamburg, who is based in Monte Carlo, looked backwards, as if leaving them Past demons are not going. As in the last weeks of the 2019 season, Zverev had to watch generation-mates steal the show from him on the ATP Cup stage and distance him with top performances. Australian Alex de Minaur was one of them, Zverev's unloved rival Stefanos Tsitsipas , who beat him in a straight line for the fifth time in a row. But also people like Russia's 2019 US Open Finalist, Daniil Medvedev .
Zverev as a supporting actor for Federer
Zverev struggled with problems outside of the court for a long time last season, the disputes with his ex-manager Patricio Apey weighed on his soul for a long time. He was hit by a sporting crisis in the summer, when Zverev made up to 20 double mistakes in some games. Everything got a little better when Zverev then joined Roger Federer's team 8 management agency and its store manager Tony Godsick. But it wasn't really good either, at the ATP World Cup in London, in the defense of his 2018 cup win, he only played an extras role. Zverev appeared there, tired in the O2 arena and outplayed that the obvious thing would have been a longer break, a total abstinence from tennis. Instead, however, Zverev traveled around for days at the end of November as a supporting actor on Federer's big South America show tour. Mind you: It was the Zverev who had previously complained about the date of the new Davis Cup final tournament scheduled in those days and had announced in this connection that he would follow the whole thing out of the hammock on a holiday island.
The first finding that Zverev should gain after the two opening bankruptcies of the current season is a simple one: his interests do not coincide with those of Federer, his friend and company colleagues. While Freigeist Federer was still training hard at his second home in Dubai in the first days of 2020 - he had surprisingly shown his cold shoulder to the ATP Cup - you could see Zverev in Australia at every turn the imbalance, a thin-skinned overall condition that matched the Recognizing your own deficits. Even seasoned tour observers could hardly remember hearing a comparable disarming statement from a professional, a verbal oath of revelation like that of Zverev - the well-known after the match disaster against the Australian de Minaur that he had "not trained enough" for this season , Since Becker, the team captain appointed by Zverev, could only look inside. Maybe Becker also wondered why Zverev had even fought another show fight with Federer in China at the end of December on the way to Australia.
Lost ground on Djokovic and Nadal
Much of Zverev's previous appearance at the team competition in Brisbane looked confused, improvised, haphazard. One had the impression that Zverev had entered the 2020 race with the naive idea that everything would somehow be straightened and smoothed out, that the new year would also have to bring new luck. In advance he was in favor of this longing, but not for this wish, his game was nothing more than the equivalent of the keep-go principle, far from any reforms or innovations. That everything was okay with his game apart from the serve, as Zverev found in the game against Tsitsipas in dialogue with himself, was more an illusion than a truth.
It couldn't have started the New Year any worse. The year in which Zverev no longer has to prove himself as a challenger against world tennis rulers like Djokovic, Federer or Nadal, but even more against those who are already lurking on the back of his neck to overtake him. He has already lost ground.