Alexander Zverev (born 20 April 1997) is a Russian-German tennis player who won the 2014 Australian Open Junior Division. In 2017, he defeated Djokovic Djokovic 2-0 at the Rome Masters to win the Masters title for the first time, ranking in the top ten of the world for the first time, and in August of the same year, he defeated Federer 2-0 in the Rogers Cup final to win the second Masters title. In 2018, he defeated Thiem 2-0 at the Madrid Masters to win his third Masters title, and in November of the same year, he defeated Federer and Djokovic in a row to win the ATP year-end finals. In 2019, Zverev Jr. did not continue the fiery state of the previous two years, and only won one ATP 250 event. In 2020, Zverev Jr. reached the final four of a Grand Slam for the first time at the Australian Open.
As a new generation player, Zverev Jr. has indeed achieved very good results and gained a lot of confidence. Last month, it was revealed that Zverev Jr. boldly stated his career goal, which is to win four Grand Slam titles. As the current no. 7 player in the world, Zverev Jr. has high hopes from many people, hoping that he will successfully succeed the Big Three and become a super-first-class player.
However, after synthesizing all aspects of his performance, I would like to pour a little cold water on those who are optimistic about Zverev Jr. For now, I don't think Zverev Jr. can be a super-first-class player like Fernard.
The following is a detailed analysis from four aspects: key technologies, emotional management, personal life and daily training.
First of all, Zverev Jr.'s current key technology is difficult to support him to become a super-first-class player. Zverev Jr. is very good at serving, but his double mistakes are also amazing. In 2019, Zverev Jr. sent a total of 718 Ace balls, but the number of double errors also reached 388, and the ratio of the two was 1.85. We might as well take Federer as a reference, Federer issued a total of 460 Ace balls in 2019, but the number of double errors is only 97, and the ratio of the two is 4.74. Looking at three other very key indicators, Zverev Jr. won 44.2% in the second serve in 2019 (Federer was 59.4%), the success rate of holding serves was 79.9% (Federer was 91.2%), and the save rate at the break point was 59.6% (Federer was 71.1%). The above six sets of indicators are the key indicators of serve, serve, break and other links. Compared with super-first-class players like Federer, Zverev Jr. is completely behind, revealing that he still has a lot of room for improvement in key technologies.
Secondly, Zverev Jr.'s emotional management skills need to be improved when he plays. Looking at some of the major matches of Zverev Jr., he often plays how he plays well. However, when encountering difficulties, they are often helpless, have no morale, and are defeated. And we all know that the ability to play against the wind may be a better reflection of the player's ball quotient, wisdom and psychological quality. Taking last year's shanghai masters final with Medvedev as an example, Zverev Jr. was broken at the beginning of the match, and although he achieved a return break, he still played abnormally at the end of the set to lose the first set 4-6. The second set began with a repetition of the first set, followed by a direct collapse of Zverev's mentality, and he lost 1-6.
Such a situation is reminiscent of his match against Zheng Hyun in the third round of the 2018 Australian Open, when Zverev Jr. suddenly lost his form in the decider, and there were many inexplicable mistakes, for which he twice threw the racket in anger, and even stomped on the racket with his foot, and finally was reversed by the opponent with the embarrassing score of swallowing eggs in the decider.
In addition, Zverev Jr. was invited to hangzhou with Federer to participate in the exhibition match at the end of December last year, and afterwards he said publicly to the media, "On December 28, my girlfriend and I were in China, you can't imagine that I coughed in Australia for a full month, when people didn't know about the epidemic, and my fever lasted for about two or three days." This was the case with my girlfriend, we didn't know what the illness was and after arriving in Melbourne my condition improved. Zverev's remarks were interpreted by the outside world as a hint that he had contracted some kind of disease (new crown pneumonia) in China. As soon as this remark came out, Chinese fans were in an uproar. Federer, Nadal and others rarely make similar controversial remarks, and Zverev Jr. has to make up for this lesson in dealing with the media and self-image packaging.
In fact, Zverev Jr. has lost his temper and dropped his beat on the court many times. Zverev Jr. will not only be angry with himself, but even argue with the referee, during the 2018 and 2020 Australian Open, he twice had a dispute with the referee on the issue of turning on the lights, and both times lost the game, because of this stem was given a nickname by the fans - "Lamplight".
The above situation shows that Zverev's emotional management ability does need to be improved, and perhaps he still has a long way to go in adjusting his mentality and defusing stress and crisis. Failure to resolve this aspect will largely prevent him from going further in major competitions.
Third, Zverev Jr. still needs to be strictly managed in his personal life. We all know that the big three of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are very disciplined in their personal lives, Federer met Mirka at the age of 17, the two have been married for more than 10 years, Mirka has been a helper, Federer has been able to focus on tennis training and competition.
Nadal experienced a long and stable relationship before marrying his wife, and Francesca has always been Nadal's strong backing, and there has never been any scandal during this period. Djokovic fell in love with Elena before he became famous, and his stable relationship and family helped Djokovic achieve many dazzling results on the field.
The big three's personal life experiences have proven time and again that a stable emotional and family life is the foundation of a player's success, and it can help players devote themselves to the game and training without distraction. On the contrary, the changeable love life will involve the energy of the players, affecting their emotions, training and participation. Tennis is a sport that requires a high degree of concentration, and the emotional entanglement of drifting and points is undoubtedly very detrimental to the growth and progress of players.
According to the essentiallysports.com website reported on April 23 that Zverev Jr. and his famous model girlfriend Pata have broken up. The daily life of tennis players requires a high degree of self-discipline, and once they are connected with the entertainment industry, the original state of life and rhythm will be disrupted, and the effect of training will be greatly reduced. For example, when Serena was involved in Hollywood, her grades and rankings declined significantly.
Fourth, Zverev Jr. was not trained enough to be decent and hardworking. In this regard, Zverev Jr.'s former coach may have the most say. Essentiallysports.com website published a report on April 17 with the headline "He can't complete quality training — former coach criticized Zverev Jr. so much." The former coach was quoted as saying, "I trained the younger Zverev for eight months and I noticed that, he used to walk back and forth in the same game. That's why I don't think he can win a Grand Slam tournament yet. This irregularity caused him to lose ground in the fifth set. (Zverev Jr.) is often distracted by phone calls and social media, he spends three hours on the pitch, but he can't do a high-quality training session of an hour and a half, he gets impatient, he stops in anger, he gets distracted when he trains. ”
The above analysis shows that Zverev Jr. has areas that need to be improved in four aspects, such as key techniques, emotional management, personal life and daily training, and there is still a big gap between him and the super-first-class players like Fernard. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that Zverev Jr. is a very outstanding new generation of players, who bear many halos of talent, young fame and so on, and even achieved the feat of winning consecutive victories over Federer Djokovic.
However, we still hope that Zverev Jr. can face up to his own problems, earnestly learn from the successful experience of the giants of his predecessors, sink his heart to make up for the shortcomings in a down-to-earth manner, and grow and mature as soon as possible, rather than eventually becoming the Zhongyong who is "invisible to everyone" in Wang Anshi's pen. (Source: Tennis House Author: Yun Cirrus Yunshu)