Germany’s Alexander Zverev said he played one of his worst matches since the Tour restarted after falling in straight sets at the ATP Finals on Monday.
The US Open runner-up struggled with his serve throughout his 6-3, 6-4, loss to Daniil Medvedev in his opening match of the round-robin tournament. Zverev hit a total of seven double faults and could only win 21% (4/19) of the points behind his second serve. Furthermore, he also produced a costly 27 unforced errors which was eight more than his opponent.
“All in all, it wasn’t a good match for me. I think since the restart of the season, it was one of the worst ones. But credit to Daniil. He did what he needed to do,” Zverev said afterwards.
Heading into the ATP Finals Zverev had been in good form after winning 12 out of his last 13 matches on the Tour. Coincidentally, his only loss was to Medvedev in the Paris Masters final when he was ousted in three sets. His win-loss for the season now stands at 27-10.
Medvedev himself also looked at times to be tentative on the court, especially during the early stages. A somewhat contrasting situation compared to their meeting that took place just over a week ago in France.
“It’s much quicker, and also the balls are not very controllable with this surface,” Zverev said of the conditions.
As a result of his latest match, the 2018 champion may have to win his next two matches in order to have any chance of progressing to the semi-final stage. Later in the week he is set to play Diego Schwartzman and Novak Djokovic. Djokovic topped Schwartzman 6-3, 6-2, in their opening match.
“I need to look at myself. I need to play better. I need to be better on the court,” Zverev admits.
“If I play like today (Monday), I’m not going to win any matches here this week. Now I can’t afford to lose. I need to beat Diego, I need to beat Djokovic to have a chance to go to the semifinals. I’m going to try to do that. But with how I played, it’s going to be difficult to do.”
Zverev will play Schwartzman on Wednesday.
