MUTUA MADRID OPEN

April 23, 2025

Alexander Zverev

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Sascha, welcome back. Congratulations on your title in Munich, that must give you a boost of confidence coming into Madrid.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Yeah, finally played some good tennis, and winning a tournament always helps with the confidence. Confidence was not very high before Munich, I'd not played my best, but very happy with the tournament win, and moving forward hopefully I can continue playing some good tennis.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please?

Q. What advice will you give to a young person who wants to become professional tennis player?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Just do what you enjoy. If you enjoy playing tennis, then that's great. As long as you enjoy something I think the hard work and the things that you have to do outside of the court and also before the matches and everything like that, that becomes easier. If you enjoy something, whether it's playing tennis, playing football, or anything else in the world, I think if you are doing it with fun, it always helps.

Q. What are the feelings that you have when you come to Madrid, first thing that comes to your mind, and second, as you were saying, you have to visualize and you have to prepare when you play tennis, what is your visualization for this year?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: The first thing that comes to mind to Madrid when I arrive here is I will feel good on the tennis court. I know this. It's one of my favorite tournaments. It's my favorite court, the center court, only lost two times in my entire life here, so it's a special place for me. It's a place where I had a lot of success also, so that helps. I hope I can continue this year the same way I did the last few years where I'm winning great matches here and going far in the tournament. So that's, for sure, something that helps when I come to Madrid.

Q. We have seen on tour you had the opportunity to become No. 1 of the world, have you feel extra pressure because of this?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: No, I think I was just playing bad, to be honest. That's how it is sometimes. I think I said it before, Australia did affect me, and there was a lot of things that, in my mind, I was not playing well.

I'm past that now. I just won a tournament last week. Winning tournaments, especially those level of tournaments, you don't win by playing bad. I'm happy that I did win, the confidence definitely raises after you win a tournament like this. Yeah, moving forward, I hope, as I said, I can continue on the same path and still improve and still try to win.

Q. You mentioned that it's been some difficult moments since Australia, just wondered if it's been harder this time kind of post-Australia compared to French last year or the US Open in 2020, and if so why that might have been.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Well, US Open 2020 was different because we moved into a Grand Slam straight away at the French Open then. It was a weird time, weird schedule, but I was also, it was my first Grand Slam final.

Last year at the French I played a fantastic match and I came up short against Carlos, who then in the end won in five sets.

So this time, yeah, it was a bit different, I was maybe a bit more upset because I really felt like I can win. I really felt like, going into the match, okay, maybe I do 100 percent have a chance, and then it turned out that I had not really many chances, you know. That was upsetting to me.

But again, that's a few months past now. We have here, and we have Rome, and then we're going into the French Open. I can't think too much about Australia any more, I have to think about the next three weeks ahead.

Q. I would like to know, because it first happened in Australia, it didn't happen this last week in Munich, you receive some, let's say, disrespect treatment from the crowd, so how you personally deal with that, and if you are already exhausted of this kind of stuff?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: No, it's okay. In Munich the crowd was amazing, to be honest. I said this before, in the quarterfinal match against Griekspoor I was mentally out of the match, and the crowd was the one that got me back and I won the match because of the crowd, so I can't complain at all.

To be honest, there's always going to be one or two idiots everywhere. It's in every single sport like this. You have it in football, races, you have it in tennis, you have it somewhere else. It's just like that, it's how sport is. But for me the crowd was amazing in Munich.

Q. You're one of the few players who have been asked about doping controls and how strict they are. I just wondered, players have used words like "traumatic" to describe some of the situations they've been put in. I just wondered if you can explain the reality of what it's like for a player, how careful you have to be about contamination and everything you put in your body, any extreme steps you have to take.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Yeah, but, I mean, I think it's just a subject that we've been talking about more over the last year, or not year, half a year or so, because of, obviously, Jannik and Iga a little bit. But, in general, nothing really changes for us, nothing changed.

It is an annoying process, I have to be to be honest, because we have to be at a certain place every single day where we kind of give our details of where we're going to be for like an hour a day. But at the same time if they show up not in the hour that we gave them, you still have to come back to the place, right.

So for me, for example, it happened, I think it was end of last year or so in December, where I was, I think I was picking up my daughter from the airport in Nice, and then doping control, they, my slot is like at 7:00 or 8:00 a.m., right, and they came at 9:00 p.m. They call me, like, You have to come back. I'm like, I can't, I'm picking up a three-year-old child. They're like, No, you have to come back, doesn't matter what happens.

So that is more annoying, because it's kind of they're taking the freedom of life away a little bit. Okay, if you want to come within the hour, that's fine, because that's the rule. But then after that you have to give us the freedom of living. Just because you decided that you want to show up at a random time and not at the time slot that you are given doesn't mean that I have to completely change my plans and leave everything and all of a sudden be available to you. That's not right, in my opinion, right.

As I said, if I pick my daughter up from the airport, that is more important to me, right, and that's, that should be priority to me. That system and that anti-doping system cannot decide for you that you have to leave everything and all of a sudden come back straight away. I think that's wrong. That system can be better, and that system can change a little bit.

But to the contamination, I think, yeah, you have to be careful, and we know that, but that hasn't changed to us. That hasn't changed since the Iga and Jannik case. We know that, we are aware of it, and, yeah, it's just more the things that are around the anti-doping system that are just annoying to us and to I think anybody in the world.

Q. Did you go home on that occasion? Did you go back?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Yeah, yeah. Well, actually I waited, because they came out, and then I went home.

But still, let's say you're out with your friends, right? I mean, we're home, what? Five weeks a year maximum? On those five weeks if we're going out for one night, if you're with your friends, if you want to spend some time away, if you even want to have a nice romantic dinner with your wife or girlfriend or whatever, like they can destroy that within a second. That's something that is just not right to me, because we don't have time at home anyways.

So, if you want to come at the right time, that's fine. But if you want to just completely mess with our lives, then that's not fine, in my opinion.