PARIS, May 20 (Reuters) – Germany’s Alexander Zverev has \u2060been knocking on the door for the best part of a decade but is still \u2060waiting to enter the club of Grand Slam champions and time might be running out.<\/p>\n
Zverev, 29, \u200cwill get another chance at Roland Garros where he will chalk up a 41st Grand Slam main draw appearance. With one sizeable hurdle removed, he may not get a better one.<\/p>\n
The world number three will be seeded second following the withdrawal of defending champion \u200bCarlos Alcaraz and while he still faces a daunting task, he \u2060is capable of a deep run.<\/p>\n
Few players have \u2060been as consistent on the Parisian red clay as Zverev. After successive semi-final appearances between 2021 and 2023 \u2060he \u200creached the final in 2024 only to lose to Alcaraz. Last year he bowed out in the quarter-finals to Novak Djokovic.<\/p>\n
Zverev possesses a damaging first serve and backhand and moves serenely on clay. \u2060The dilemma though is how he can convince himself that his \u200btime is still to come.<\/p>\n
While he \u200cwould not have to contend with Sinner until the final, the mere presence of the Italian \u2060in the draw \u200bis enough to darken his mood. Four times he has faced Sinner this season and four times he has shaken hands defeated, without winning a set.<\/p>\n
‘BIG GAP BETWEEN SINNER AND EVERYBODY ELSE’ <\/p>\n
After the most recent beating, in the Madrid final when \u2060he won only three games, Zverev spelled out the problem.<\/p>\n
“It’s \u200bnot like I’m the only one losing to him. I’m just losing to him more because I get to him every single time and I lose to him. So it’s like that,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s a big gap \u2060between Sinner and everybody else right now. It’s quite simple.”<\/p>\n
Zverev suffered from fatigue at the Italian Open where he lost to Luciano Darderi in the last 16 and pulled out of his home city tournament in Hamburg with a back niggle.<\/p>\n
He will need to be firing on all cylinders if he has any hope of \u200bbreaking through the glass ceiling and might secretly be hoping world number \u2060one Sinner’s relentless run of form will end before June 7 — the date of the men’s final.<\/p>\n
Publicly, however, he \u200bremains hopeful that even if he crosses paths with the Italian \u200cagain he can find the key.<\/p>\n
“I do have to believe \u200bthat I’m capable of beating him. I do have to believe it, otherwise we can just give him the trophy without playing the tournament,” Zverev said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Martyn HermanEditing by Toby Davis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS, May 20 (Reuters) – Germany’s Alexander Zverev has \u2060been knocking on the door for the best part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,6675,85,747],"class_list":["post-682868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-na","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}