Tennis star Alexander Zverev criticizes strain

The current world number two speaks on the sidelines of the Laver Cup in Berlin about the strain on tennis players – and despairs about the situation.

It took a while for Alexander Zverev to burst out. Germany’s best tennis player had just lost his first singles match against the American Taylor Fritz at the Laver Cup in Berlin. 4:6 and 5:7, it was already the Hamburg native’s third defeat against Fritz in 2024. In the press conference room of the Uber Arena, the journalists present were waiting eagerly for the 27-year-old when the event’s media team announced that Zverev would take his place on the podium at 9:50 p.m., and Fritz, who had originally been announced first, would take his place afterwards, at around 10:10 p.m.

A little later, however, there was a change of plan. “Fritz comes to the press conference first, followed by Zverev,” was the announcement after more than 20 minutes had already passed. At around 10:30 p.m., the 1.98-meter-tall man entered the room, took a few heavy steps onto the stage and sat down.

What followed: Alexander Zverev verbally vented his anger at the messed up situation in his sport. As in football, calls for less stress on athletes are growing louder in tennis too.

“We have the longest season in sport, unnecessarily long, with an unnecessarily large number of tournaments,” Zverev replied when asked about his physical condition given the full schedule. “And I am convinced that we should not play from December 27th, when the United Cup (a team tournament held in Sydney and Perth, editor’s note) starts, to November 19th or 20th, when the ATP Finals end.”

Already on Friday, Zverev’s colleague, the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, had declared in Berlin: “I think it’s all getting too much. I’m one of those players who think that there are already a lot of compulsory tournaments in the year – and possibly even more in the next few years.”

What’s more: “They’re going to kill us one way or another,” Alcaraz continued with a slight wink. But then he became serious again: “There are already a lot of injuries. At some point, a lot of top players will miss a lot of tournaments because they have to think about their health.”

Zverev agreed on Saturday evening: There is no time for breaks, there is no time to prepare your body, there is no time to build muscle, there is no time when you can say: ‘I’m not going to touch my tennis racket for a month and instead prepare myself physically for the long season.’ We don’t have anything like that, but other sports do. That’s why I think they are further ahead with preventing injuries there too.

Tennis great Roger Federer may have played significantly fewer tournaments in the last years of his career, and Novak Djokovic is also playing less frequently these days. The now 37-year-old record Grand Slam winner said after his surprise third-round exit against Alexei Popyrin at the US Open: “I had no gas left in the tank.” But: “If you’re an ambitious young player, that’s not possible,” Zverev continued. “I think we have to do something about it. I’m on the players’ council and I believe that the ATP (the world tennis association, editor’s note) has already worked on it. There is no easy solution, but a solution has to be found.”

But then Zverev also made it clear to the world tennis association: “The ATP doesn’t care about our opinion. It’s a business that’s about money.” When asked whether no top player could achieve anything with a coordinated action, Zverev replied: “And then what? A strike? We’re not allowed to strike. We’ll be punished if we don’t play tournaments. So what should we do? These are all things that we can neither influence nor decide. And yet they exist.