ROLAND GARROS — As Alexander Zverev lay flat on his back on the clay of Court Philippe-Chatrier, all he will have heard is the adulation of the crowd and the beating of his own heart.
He had finally achieved a childhood dream, having lost three previous grand slam finals and having led in two of them.
Addressing his team, he said: “We’ve been through injuries. We’ve been through heartbreak. We’ve been through losses. We’ve been losers at times in the important moments. But at the end of the day, we’re grand slam champions now.”
Heartbreak forgotten, defeats avenged, history secured, he sobbed. If there were boos, he would not have heard them
But his victory over Flavio Cobolli, while applauded by many who had sat through more than four hours and five impossibly tense sets, will not be universally well received. There is a strong possibility that Zverev is the most divisive, unpopular slam winner of the modern era.
There are any number of reasons that he is apparently so disliked, some tangible and some not so much.
The more tangible are the allegations of abuse made by two of his ex-girlfriends, Olya Sharypova and Brenda Patea. The former accused Zverev of trying to smother her with a pillow, and punching her in the face, claims he denied from the start and as a result of which the ATP took no action after conducting an investigation.
Now French Open champion Zverev has always denied the allegations against him (Photo: Getty)
The latter alleged Zverev had tried to strangle her during an argument, and he was initially fined £390,000 by a German court – although he lodged a defence and settled out of court in 2024, paying around £170,000 in fines instead. His lawyers insisted in a statement that he was “still considered innocent”, and Zverev himself has always denied all the allegations brought by Sharypova and Patea.
But these allegations, which have been drawn out over a number of years and one of which is still subject to a libel case in Germany, only form part of the apparent public distaste for Zverev.
He has a laundry list of former coaches, who rarely last long and often seem to leave because they don’t take kindly to Zverev’s attitude.
“One day he may become a great player but currently he has some off court issues that make it difficult to work in a way that is consistent with my philosophy,” said eight-time major champion Ivan Lendl, who coached Andy Murray to so much success. Juan Carlos Ferrero, who helped Carlos Alcaraz to all but his most recent grand slam title, complained that he had to tell the German it “wasn’t okay to be 20 or 30 minutes late for practice every day” and quit of his own accord.
You wonder whether his father and brother would still be there if they weren’t related to him.
Brother Mischa (left) and father Alexander Sr (right) were both in Zverev’s box on Sunday (Photo: Getty)
Zverev has also fallen out with Wimbledon champion Michael Stich, and sacked Sergi Bruguera, who stuck with him through the rehab from a serious ankle injury in 2022, only to find himself out on his backside shortly after the comeback.
One senior German tennis official even said that Zverev “belongs to a generation that is more disrespectful to authorities”.
And then there is some of the behaviour in front of the cameras, like in 2022 when he was fined $40,000 in Acapulco for swearing at umpire Alessandro Germani and then smashing his racket into the official’s chair. Even this year, he was caught swearing at an official in Australia on TV coverage; and when he was booed by the Miami crowd after receiving a time violation, he told the umpire “that’s for you” during a heated exchange of views.
There is a feeling that when things go wrong for Alexander Zverev, it is rarely his fault. Even during the grand slam final he actually won, he objected to the flight of a pigeon, the spider camera and on more than one occasion, the decision of a line judge.
For now though, he is a grand slam champion – and no one can take that away from him, however much they might want to.