Alexander Zverev sees no progress on the way to former form and former self-confidence after the round of 2 at the Masters tournament in Rome. Due to the 6: 6, 7: 3 (7: 2016) defeat against the Russian Daniil Medvedev, he will also fall behind Jan-Lennard Struff in the new world rankings next week and for the first time since August <> will no longer be the highest-ranked German professional.
"I'm still 1000 kilometers away," said the Hamburg native in an interview with the TV station Sky about his current level of performance. "To say you're back, you have to win at least once, and I don't. I'm out earlier than I'd like. Somehow I can't manage to get any further in the tournament right now."
Struff overtakes Zverev
The semi-finals at the tournament in Dubai at the beginning of March remains the best performance this year, at the higher-quality Masters events it was over at the latest in the round of 16 against top players such as Medvedev or the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz.
"I have to win, and then it resolves. That's all I know what to say now. At the moment this year I'm playing the worst tennis probably since 2015, 2016," Zverev said less than two weeks before the start of the French Open. At the second Grand Slam tournament of the season, he seriously injured his foot last year and had to take a break for months.
Madrid finalist Struff (33) will now overtake the 26-year-old in the world rankings, but classifies this as irrelevant. "With Sascha, we have someone who has been the clear number 1 in Germany for years. The fact that I have now moved so close to him is only due to his long injury and that I again had no points to defend," said Struff recently in an interview with the German Tennis Association and encouraged Zverev: "I'm sure that he will soon be higher up in the rankings again."