LONDON — Alexander Zverev tries hard. He wants to be a better tennis player and challenge Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz for titles. And he also wants, desperately, to receive a little of the affection his great rivals enjoy.
The German is working hard on both fronts: on the court and in his public relations. Listening to his runner-up speech on Centre Court is a perfect example of all the effort he is putting in to win people over, once and for all.
And what better way than to lavish praise on the people in the Royal Box while millions of television viewers watch on.
Zverev closed with these words at the men’s final trophy ceremony at Wimbledon: “It’s very special to play on Centre Court and it’s because of the Royal Box as well, the amount of special people I see… it’s a great honour to play in front of you, your highness, everybody else. The Royal Box is a special thing and a massive honour to be here, as simple as that.”
Ver esta publicación en Instagram
An excess of warmth directed at a group made up of British royalty, global sporting figures, celebrities with millions of followers around the world and former Wimbledon champions.
The question is: is that flood of courtesy paying off? It is also a resource he is increasingly deploying towards the crowd.
“I wanna thank the crowd for these amazing two weeks. Every time I played the court was full and I never felt support like that in Wimbledon. You are a big part why I made it to the final,” Zverev said this Sunday after losing to Jannik Sinner in London.
The same crowd that booed him last Wednesday when his name was announced.
There were boos on Centre Court when, during the on-court interview with Arthur Fery in the quarter-finals, the British player was told he would face the German in the semifinals.
Yes, it was the next opponent for the local favourite — the most surprising story of Wimbledon 2026 and the man in whom English hopes were pinned. Even so, it would have been unthinkable to see similar reactions from the crowd if the obstacle in Andy Murray’s path had been Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. Not even with Djokovic, a figure who has historically had a tense relationship with the London stands.
And the joke that never fails him — expressing his ironic “contempt” for the opponents who deny him success — was not missing at Wimbledon: “Jannik, I don’t like you anymore.”
Zverev earned his Grand Slam champion status last month in Paris and admitted he wants more. He knows he can compete with the best.
Ver esta publicación en Instagram
“I haven’t beaten Jannik and Carlos this year, but I’ve pushed them to the limits. Alcaraz in Australia, Jannik maybe here. There was always this conversation about who will be the third guy. Kind of the last couple of years, I’ve always been the third guy, but I was just far away from those two. If I get closer to them, if I can be in the mix — competing and winning the big tournaments alongside them — it would be great,” he told the media in London.
Sporting success that is becoming increasingly familiar to him, even as he pursues the difficult task of changing his image, marked by a long list of turbulent episodes.
The domestic violence accusations from two of his ex partners have been the defining moments in the conversation around Zverev away from the court. Brenda Patea, the mother of his daughter, took him to the German courts in a case that ended in a settlement in which the player paid a fine of 200,000 euros, without his guilt or innocence being established.
The Patea case was not the only time he found himself in court: for two years, Zverev and his former agent, Chilean Patricio Apey, were embroiled in a bitter legal battle over a long-term representation contract.
“I wanted to protect what we had agreed, which was a percentage. If I negotiated 45 million dollars in contracts for him at the stage he was at, the logical thing was that in the next stage they could be worth double. Time passed, and all the court proceedings, in the middle of the pandemic, were delayed. It coincided that, unfortunately for him, things started going badly. On the court and especially off it. So in the end we reached an agreement and dropped the case,” Apey explained in an interview with CLAY in 2022.
At the ATP 500 in Acapulco that year he was expelled and fined after violently hitting his racquet against the umpire’s chair and directing a stream of insults at the official.
Also, in the middle of the pandemic, Zverev was involved in the party organised by Djokovic that resulted in a chain of positive Covid-19 tests.
The ATP already tried using Netflix, to dismal effect: in the series Break Point, a failed and boring exercise in telling the story of the circuit from the inside, his narrative was built around the effort and recovery from the brutal injury he suffered in the Roland Garros 2022 semifinals. The fact that the documentary series completely ignored the accusations of abuse against his ex partners did not go down well among fans.
Improving his reputation and competing at the top of tennis: his double mission with his new Grand Slam champion status, as he approaches thirty.
