ROLAND GARROS

May 23, 2025

Alexander Zverev

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Sascha, welcome back to Paris. We know you were not 100% in Hamburg. Are you feeling better, and how was your trip over?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: My trip over was phenomenal, actually. Some funny stories there (smiling). My trip here was funny because we were supposed to fly yesterday evening at 6:45 p.m., and we took off from Hamburg, and we were flying together with Lehecka, Nakashima, some doubles guys, and we got struck by lightning, funny enough.

So we had to do an emergency landing back in Hamburg. Couldn't find another plane, so everybody else flew the next morning. I took another plane and flew around 1:00 a.m., so I arrived here at 3:00.

So that was quite funny. It was the first time experience got struck by lightning midair, which is funny because it was a little noise, no real wobbling, nothing, but yeah. So that was my trip over.

Best story of Roland Garros so far.

THE MODERATOR: How are you feeling?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Yeah, words cannot be...

THE MODERATOR: Questions in English.

Q. It's the first year without Rafael Nadal. Does it change anything for you mentally?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Well, for me, last year, I mean, it changed a lot for me, because last year I was playing him first round. That wasn't the best feeling in the world when the draw came out, because when you see him on Philippe Chatrier, this is the most respected and probably the most feared athlete inside of a stadium. I think Rafa Nadal on Philippe Chatrier Court is the most difficult task in sports history.

Yeah, so for me the feeling was obviously very, very different. I'm playing another lefty, but obviously not somebody who won the tournament 14 times.

I think the fans will miss him. It's great to see that Roland Garros is planning a big ceremony for him and planning something special. I'm looking forward to seeing what that will be.

Q. Going back 12 months, when you just won Rome and you obviously came in in great form, it's not gone quite so well the last couple of months for you. Can you remember how you felt in this chair, say, a year ago? Is it a question of trying to rediscover that feeling just by playing? Is there anything you feel you can do to guarantee it, or is it just a work in progress?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Well, I think the first few matches will be very important for me, for sure. But again, Roland Garros is different to all the other tournaments on clay. This is a Grand Slam. We're playing best-of-five sets.

A lot of other things come into consideration here. Physical comes into consideration here a lot more than all the other events where we're playing best-of-three sets and I have a day off in between. This is obviously very, very different.

So, you know, I remember last year Carlos was kind of being asked the same questions, because he had a very bad clay court season, and he came in here, was maybe struggling a bit more in the early rounds, but then found his rhythm and won the tournament.

I'm not saying that will happen to me, but of course that's what I'm looking for. That's kind of the path I'm looking forward to going, as well. For me, the goal remains the same. Did I have the best preparation? Probably not, especially with the illness in Hamburg. I know that. So that's what I'm saying. It is crucial for me to play well in the early stages.

But yeah, we'll see how it goes. I'm excited for this tournament. I'm excited for another opportunity, especially after the Australian Open. It will be great to come back on a Grand Slam court, yeah, hopefully take my chances.

Q. Two weeks ago, Caroline Garcia posted on her Twitter X page a message on trying to call out the culture of playing through injury.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: I saw that.

Q. Do you resonate with that message, and what's your take on playing through injury?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Yeah, I obviously 100% respect that, and also, for sure, I can feel what she feels.

The thing is with us tennis players, it's a one-on-one sport, so we get the blame all the time, right? So my situation in Hamburg, for example, would I have pulled out? I would have gotten blamed for a lot of different things. A lot of blame for coming there, probably taking the money and leaving after a match. You know, I would have gotten blamed for not taking the tournament serious and all that which would not have been true.

Now that I lost with illness, and I think everybody knows tennis saw I wasn't at 100%, I'm getting blamed for playing with this kind of condition and finding excuses, kind of.

So tennis is a big kind of blaming culture along the fans and I think along social media, as well. We do get a lot of hate.

So, yeah, I think the physical aspect of the game is very important, and the players' health is very important, but I think the mental health is extremely important as well. I think in a one-on-one sport, you can't really hide, and for us tennis players, the abuse that we get on a daily basis, online and through social media, is extreme.

The amount of it you guys don't see, because a lot of it is on hidden messages and direct messages and all that. A lot of it we do see as players. So mentally I think it is a very difficult sport for us.

Q. Are you envious at all of players who don't have to come up or are coming up now who didn't come up when you came up when you had the three greatest players pretty much ever, sort of if not in their primes then pretty close to it? Or is it your sense that this sport keeps evolving and getting better and getting harder and that it's just as hard as ever to break in now?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: The question is whether it's harder to break in, to break through now or 10 years ago?

Q. Yeah, I guess to make it shorter and more concise, yeah. And did it make you better having to fight through that or are you envious of not...

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: No, I mean, I wish I would not have had the three greatest players of all time for the first ten years of my career, because I think I would have won maybe one or two slams by now and probably a few more tournaments, but at the same time, it was a privilege playing them and I enjoyed every moment of it.

But back to your question, it's different. It depends what breaking through is in your eyes. I think maybe breaking through to the top 100, top 50 maybe is more difficult now because of the depth of the game, maybe even top 30 is more difficult now, because as I said, everybody has so much depth and players outside top 30 and top 40 can still be top-10 players, like we saw plenty of times this year.

But I think breaking into the top 10 or top 5 in the world was more difficult back then, because four spots were taken at all times, and No. 5, 6, 7, was basically Stan, Delpo, and Tomas Berdych, more or less, or someone like Kei Nishikori or David Ferrer, so six or seven spots were constantly taken.

I don't see that nowadays. I see Jannik is very dominant. Carlos is very dominant. If you take away the last three months of my career, maybe I have been quite consistent at the top for the past ten years.

But then the next few spots, obviously Novak is still Novak, when he's fit and healthy and motivated, he's still the greatest of all time.

But apart from those four spots, I think everything is up for grabs nowadays a little bit. So it kind of seems like the rise of players comes a bit quicker, like Jack Draper this year, all of a sudden rising up the rankings, No. 4 in the world very, very quickly. He deserves to be. He's a great player. He's won a Masters. He made a final of another one. He absolutely deserves to be where he is right now.

Jakub Mensik wins Miami. These kind of things, they absolutely deserve that, and I'm sure that they're going to win a lot of, plenty more tournaments in the future, and they're going to be great players and going to be contenders for big events for many, many more years to come.

But to do that 10, 15 years ago, I think it took you longer, just simply by the depth, because, you know, there are so many great players, like Milos Raonic, Kei Nishikori who never even won a Masters Series, right? I think them in their prime nowadays, maybe they would have achieved that.

Q. Jannik Sinner is playing his first Grand Slam after his suspension. How do you think the crowd will receive him? I remember last summer there was some spectators yelling some things at you, as well.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Last summer? Last summer the crowd was great to me.

Q. Okay. But how do you think they will receive him?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: I think Jannik is loved, and he will always be loved by tennis fans. So if I'm in his shoes, I'm not too worried about the crowd too much.