With speculation around Zverev and Nadal joining forces<\/a> continuing, a former WTA number one has questioned the idea of Zverev working with one of the game\u2019s greatest coaches.<\/p>\n Dinara Safina is unsure how Alexander Zverev would respond to Toni Nadal if he became his coach<\/p>\n After coaching his nephew for his entire career until Carlos Moya took over in 2016, Nadal has only coached one other player.<\/p>\n That was Canada\u2019s Felix Auger-Alliasime,<\/a> whom he coached from April 2021 to 2024, and he did not travel with him full-time.<\/p>\n Zverev could become the third player the Spaniard coaches, and should this materialise, former world number one Dinara Safina has questioned whether Zverev would respond to Nadal\u2019s methods and advice.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be exciting to watch. Toni is very straightforward. I do not know how willing Alexander is to change and integrate someone else into his team. We will see,\u201d Safina told a Russian podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems to me that a lot will depend on Alexander in this collaboration, on his willingness to change, listen and try new things. Of course, I wish him all the best.\u201d<\/p>\n Zverev is currently coached by Alexander Zverev Sr, and he has previously had David Ferrer<\/a> and Juan Carlos Ferrero<\/a> join his team.<\/p>\n The former Olympic champion is keen to add Nadal to his coaching staff after he worked with him in Mallorca. However, the world number three thinks any potential partnership will depend on the 64-year-old\u2019s schedule.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, he spent quite a lot of time with me actually as well, so I\u2019m very thankful for that,\u201d Zverev told reporters in Toronto. \u201cI mean, the time in Mallorca was amazing. I spent about 10 days there, and worked really hard and enjoyed it as well. <\/p>\n \u201cI think Toni probably enjoyed it as well. I\u2019m trying to convince him (smiling) to do more weeks with me, and we\u2019ll see how it goes, but he\u2019s a very busy man.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso he has a lot of dates that he already committed to this year, so I\u2019m not sure how much of him you\u2019ll see this year, because he gave his word to a lot of events and a lot of speeches already.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re talking about what a potential partnership could look like, for sure, and, yeah, I can give you an update probably in a few weeks time when we know more. But, yeah, I enjoyed my time there, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev has been looking at other options with regard to coaching. The German has struggled this season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[12082,39388,99,428,12084],"class_list":{"0":"post-51050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alexander-zverev","9":"tag-dinara-safina","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-toni-nadal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Alexander](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2226992071-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Mert Alper Dervis \/Anadolu via Getty ImagesAlexander Zverev says he is trying to \u2018convince\u2019 Toni Nadal to become his coach<\/p>\n