INTERNAZIONALI BNL D'ITALIA

May 13, 2022

Alexander Zverev

Press Conference

A. ZVEREV/C. Garin

7-5, 6-2

THE MODERATOR: Sascha, you enjoyed the support of the crowd out there once again today?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Very much so. I said it before, Italy is one of the countries that I think I get the most crowd support. It's always nice to be playing with the crowd behind my back.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Just wondering what was your reaction to Rafa's injury last night? How does that change things going into Roland Garros? Like you said, does that make Alcaraz the undisputed favorite now?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: I didn't know that Rafa got injured. I'm sorry.

Q. He said he was in a lot of pain.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: That explains the third set a little bit.

Yeah, I feel sorry for Rafa. Hopefully he can be fit. He has 10 days' time to be able to play in Paris.

Look, I think Alcaraz is one of the favorites. Novak is one of the favorites. Tsitsipas. If I get in form, I can do well there.

There's a lot of guys that can play well on this surface.

Q. How do you see Garin's performance today?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Very good. I think he'll be quite happy with how he played this tournament. I think the last few weeks have been quite difficult for him results-wise. But I think he can definitely be happy about how he's playing here.

Q. I heard you talking about how terrible that court is out on the grandstand. Do you think they need to make some upgrades to this facility, especially if they're going to upgrade the tournament to a 96-man draw?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: No, I think the facilities are very good, the courts are quite good.

But this court in particular, it's a court that they have to rebuild every year. It's not a court that's always there. I'm guessing it's not easy to do.

Yeah, there is quite a lot of clay on it. I think you can see when we played that the bounces were not great at times. But for both players. It doesn't only go one way.

Yeah, the end of the day you have to deal with it and you have to try to play.