ROLAND GARROS

June 5, 2025

Alexander Zverev

Press Conference

N. DJOKOVIC/A. Zverev

4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4

THE MODERATOR: Questions in English.

Q. I'm sorry, because you must be pretty disappointed, of course. Did you expect him to be able to play for three hours and 17 minutes the way he did? All those dropshots, you couldn't find a key to fight against them?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: What do you want me to say? He's won 24 of these things. I think, yes, I expected him to be able to play like this. I have not seen him play like this this year yet.

I think it was very, very high level from him. You know, it was at some point difficult for me. I mean, in the first set when the sun was not completely down, there was still some heat on the court. I could still, I felt like, hit some winners and do some damage with my serve. Then later on when it got really, really cold, I couldn't really do much.

I, at some point, felt like I didn't know how to win a point from the baseline against him. I thought he was having solutions to a lot of things that I was doing.

So credit to him. He played better than me today.

Q. We saw Novak do a similar thing with Carlos at the Australian Open. Do you think underappreciate what he's doing at 38, the tennis world and general sports world?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Yeah, I think at the moment he's a bit underrated, to be honest. Funny that you say that, but I think like a lot of people count him out already, but this year he's had wins over Carlos at the Australian Open, he has had a win over me at the French Open.

Forget the age. I think for any player, those are pretty good results. Of course you will have to ask him how he feels physically and how he will recover and if he'll be at 100% the next match, because I do think it was quite a physical match today for both of us.

But, you know, he's still beating the best of the best, so I think everybody needs to respect that.

Q. We know your strengths when you play the game is great serve and the percentage. But against Novak today, Novak had so many solutions on return. What makes him so hard with your game and the way you're serving? He practically read it all.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: I think it was a bit also conditions. It was very, very cold. So my serve speed was not very high. Again, as I said, I think when the sun completely went down, it was difficult for me to get through the court a little bit.

It was difficult for me to find, you know, kind of ways to be dominant in the rally, because my serve was neutralized very well by him. Then also, I felt like my groundstrokes, every time I tried to be aggressive, I was not really doing much.

It was difficult for me to find a solution, I think, in the cold conditions.