Alexander Zverev

Alexander "Sascha" Zverev (German pronunciation: [alɛkˈsandɐ ˈzaʃa ˈtsfeːʁɛf]; born 20 April 1997) is a German professional tennis player and the current world No. 4. He has been ranked as high as world No. 2 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), achieved in June 2022. Zverev has won 24 ATP Tour–level titles in singles and three in doubles, and has been runner-up at three majors. His most notable achievements include a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and titles at the 2018 and the 2021 ATP Finals.

Zverev is a former junior world No. 1, and won a junior major singles title at the 2014 Australian Open. He had an early breakthrough on the professional tour as well, becoming one of the youngest Challenger Tour title winners in history at the age of 17. As a teenager, Zverev won two ATP titles and upset then–world No. 3 Roger Federer on grass. At 20 years old, he became the youngest player to debut in the top 20 since Novak Djokovic. At the Laver Cup, Zverev has played an instrumental role in Team Europe's early success in the competition, winning the clinching matches in 2018 and 2019. After reaching his career-best results in 2021 and 2022, he suffered an ankle injury at the French Open, from which he recovered to re-enter the top 10 the following year.

Alexander Zverev was born on 20 April 1997 in Hamburg, Germany, to Russian parents Irina Zvereva and Alexander Mikhailovich Zverev. His older brother, Mischa, born nearly a decade earlier, was also a professional tennis player. Both of his parents were professional tennis players for the Soviet Union. His father, ranked as high as No. 175 in the world, became the top-ranked men's player nationally, while his mother was the fourth-highest-ranked women's player in the Soviet Union. They both moved from Sochi to the capital to train at the CSKA Moscow military-run tennis club. The Soviet government often restricted their players from competing outside the country, an impediment that limited how high either of Alexander's parents could rise in the world rankings. With the collapse of the Soviet Union imminent, Irina went to Germany to compete at a tournament in 1990, with her husband accompanying as her coach. While in Germany, they were offered jobs as tennis instructors. After initially declining, they accepted an offer to work at the Uhlenhorster Hockey Club in Hamburg the following year and ended up settling in the country.

Zverev, called Sascha by his family (the Russian-language diminutive for Alexander), started playing tennis at the age of three. Since he began playing tennis at a very young age, he has said, "One day, when I was, I think, one year and five months old, I just picked up a little racket and I was starting to push the ball all over our apartment, and since then, they took me out on the court. I enjoy it still, I enjoyed it back then." When he was five years old, he started to play tennis at least half an hour each day. He was extremely competitive as a child. His brother, Mischa, said, "He would not understand or accept that he was losing," when the two would play against each other. He would never want to leave the court unless he won the match. He also played hockey and football as a child but decided to focus only on tennis around the age of twelve after an early-round loss at a high-level international junior tournament in Florida.

When Alexander was young, his mother was his primary coach while his father was focused on coaching his brother. He has said, "I think I have pretty good technique, which my mum did at a young age, so credit to her for that. My backhand, in particular, is 100 percent down to my mum." While his mother had a more relaxed teaching style, his father "had a very Soviet way of doing physical training sessions" that involved doing timed drills for fixed numbers of repetitions. Alexander's coaches aimed for him to have a riskier, aggressive playing style built around hitting the ball with pace and finishing points quickly. This was a big contrast from how he played around age twelve when his style focused on being an "unbelievable fighter" from the baseline in part because he was too slow to go to the net. Initially, Alexander struggled to change his playing style. He "made a lot of errors" and lost to opponents who excelled at keeping points alive. However, his father stuck with this strategy, saying, "We must practice fast tennis, aggressive tennis. If you lose today it's no big deal. You must think about the future."

Zverev played his first junior match in January 2011 at the age of 13 at a grade 4 tournament in Poland. Near the beginning of 2012, Zverev won his first ITF title at the Fujairah Junior Championships, a low-level Grade 4 tournament in the United Arab Emirates. He would pick up a lower level Grade 5 title at the Oman International Junior 2 a few weeks later, which led him to begin competing in higher-level events shortly before his 15th birthday. He did not have much success at tournaments that were Grade 2 and above until the following year when he reached back-to-back doubles finals with Spencer Papa at the Grade A Copa Gerdau and the Grade 1 USTA International Spring Championships.

Zverev's early-season success in doubles proved to be the precursor of a major improvement in singles as well. During the European clay court season, he won his first Grade 1 title over Andrey Rublev at the Open International Junior de Beaulieu-sur-Mer. He followed up that performance with his first Grade A title at the Trofeo Bonfiglio a month later, becoming the youngest boys' singles champion in the tournament's history. He also finished runner-up at the 2013 French Open to Cristian Garín. Zverev had some grass court success as well, finishing runner-up to Nick Kyrgios at the Junior International Roehampton. However, he needed to retire at Wimbledon due to a shoulder injury. Zverev came close to reaching another major boys' singles final at the 2013 Junior US Open, but was defeated by the eventual champion Borna Ćorić in the semifinals. This success was enough for him to take over the No. 1 ranking in late October. Before the end of the season, Zverev also represented Germany in the Junior Fed Cup, leading them to a fourth-place finish. His last tournament of the year was the Grade A Orange Bowl, where he was defeated by Stefan Kozlov in the semifinals. As the top-ranked junior at the end of the season, he was named the ITF Junior World Champion, becoming the youngest boys' champion since Donald Young in 2005.

Zverev played just two tournaments in 2014, both in Australia in January. He won the singles events at both tournaments, the first of which came against Australian Omar Jasika at the Traralgon Junior International. At the Australian Open, he was able to defeat Kozlov, who was seeded second, to finish his junior career with a first major title.