Indian Wells – Alexander Zverev of course knew what questions would come first at the press conference in Indian Wells.
After the rather mild punishment by the men’s professional organisation ATP for his freak-out at the tournament in Acapulco a fortnight ago, when he destroyed his racket on the umpire’s chair and then berated the referee savagely, the topic in the tennis scene is far from over for the Olympic champion from Hamburg.
So the 24-year-old did not even bother to talk about anything else before the start of the ATP tournament in Indian Wells – in which he is allowed to participate despite the incident. Because the eight-week ban and the fine are suspended.
Olympic champion repents again
So Zverev sat down in his black training jacket on the chair in the room where he would soon prefer to talk about victories in the Californian desert. While long-time number one Novak Djokovic is forced to miss there and in Miami due to his missing Corona vaccination, Zverev will enter round two after a walk-through against American Tommy Paul or Kazakh Mikhail Kukushkin.
Earlier, he repented. “That was probably the biggest mistake of my tennis career,” he said of his short-coming in Mexico, which cost him many of the world’s sympathies he had painstakingly earned in the years before. “It was certainly the worst moment of my life and my career.” Apologising was “probably not enough, the way I behaved. It was embarrassing for me, it’s still embarrassing when I’m walking around or in the locker room. It’s not a nice feeling.”
The world number three had hit his racket several times against the umpire’s chair, where the umpire was still sitting, at the Acapulco tournament after losing the doubles match. He was disqualified and had to pay a 40,000 dollar fine. He also had to pay back the prize money of more than 30,000 dollars and loses the points for the world ranking. However, the 25,000 dollar fine by the ATP, like the eight-week ban, will only be due if he is guilty of something else within a year that will result in a fine.
Record Major winner Rafael Nadal does not think the punishment for Zverev after his freak-out at the tennis tournament in Acapulco is harsh enough. “On one hand, I don’t want any punishment for Sascha because I like him and I have a good relationship with him,” the Spanish star player said on the sidelines of the tennis tournament in Indian Wells. “On the other hand, as a fan of the sport, I would like to see a harsher punishment for this kind of behaviour, not only from him, but basically because it protects the sport and the umpires and everybody involved in the sport.”
Zverev image with dents
“If it happens to me again, then I should be suspended. But I will do everything to make sure it doesn’t happen. Not only not next year, but hopefully for the rest of my career,” Zverev said. The public image of him has some dents anyway. For a long time he was always very thin-skinned in public, especially after defeats. He vehemently denied the accusations of violence made by his ex-girlfriend, and the ATP is still investigating the matter. The victory at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and his credible joy at being allowed to represent Germany then helped Zverev noticeably on the sympathy scale – but Acapulco has now damaged his image again.
According to him, he has been working for months to organise a treat for the fans back home: The Davis Cup. His participation in Brazil last week, he says, was only seemingly short-term. What appeared to be an attempt to quickly gain points by playing in Rio de Janeiro had probably been in the planning for weeks. “It seemed short notice, but it wasn’t because I’ve been talking about it with our captain since the Australian Open. A business partner and I are working on bringing the Davis Cup to Germany and, of course, we had to qualify first,” he reported now in the USA.
The German team manager Michael Kohlmann had emphasised in Rio: “If it were in Germany, that would of course be a huge thing and a huge highlight for everyone in our team.”
Hopes for Davis Cup in Hamburg
He is in “constant contact, weekly contact, we talk about the business idea and so on and so forth” with Gerard Piqué, who, in addition to his active career as a professional footballer with FC Barcelona, is the investor who decides the fate of the traditional tennis team competition. It is now only a matter of “whether they accept our offer or not,” Zverev said.
The fact that he had long been a big critic of the new format, refusing to play in the Davis Cup, is now not seen by Zverev as a contradiction. “I have always said that I am not a huge fan of it. But I am already a huge fan of what was in Rio now, for example: the away matches, the home matches. I’m a huge fan of that,” he said. The fact that the format will now be split up and not all played in December at one venue, as was the case last year, “that’s already a huge step in the right direction.”
If everything works out, Zverev will be part of the German team in his hometown of Hamburg in September. And will have half of his probation behind him by then. “At the end of the day, I hope people can forgive me and understand that there is a lot of mental pressure and things happen that people don’t even see and that we are all human. It’s not easy for me. But I deserve that, that it’s not easy for me right now. “
