The year-end #1 was decided this week when the Sinner was out. It is definitely and strange. The 29-year-old is guaranteed a rating without yet maintaining it, and he was the first to point out the gap. “For now, I’m number 2 in the world, it’s funny enough,” he said after his fourth-round victory over Kazakhstan’s Aleksandr Bublik (7-6, 4-6, 7-6).
He has put off feeling until the rating actually changes. “I think the emotion comes when you actually see the No. 1 next to your name,” he said. “I think it’s definitely going to be something special.” When asked if friends have already sent messages, he laughed. “Yes, everyone.”
If I do something that makes my opponents think I’m distracting them, I don’t want to do it. I want to win in tennis.
The ranking caps a season in which Zverev leads the ATP Tour with 62 wins. He won Roland Garros to become the first German to win a title in the Open Era, and he won the US Open after spending 23 hours and 11 minutes on court.
Focusing on the tournament ahead of him is nothing new. At the US Open, it was so complete that he missed what everyone noticed. the heavy ball that bounced before his serve that started in New York and that he realized he had gone too far only after the tournament was over. “I wasn’t aware because my phone was off, I wasn’t seeing social media and all that,” he said. After a 6-4, 6-4 quarterfinal victory over Australia’s Alex de Minaur, the chair umpire reminded him to watch the shot clock. Zverev said he does it less than in New York and is working on it. “If I’m doing something that my opponents think I’m distracting, I don’t want to do that,” he said. “I want to win in tennis.”
The week also tested his body. Zverev said he first felt his right ankle in his 6-4, 6-7, 6-3 third-round win over Quentin Hallis of France and that it got worse in the second set against Bublik. It’s the ankle in which he tore three ligaments in the 2022 Roland Garros semifinal against Rafael Nadal, who led 7-6, 6-6 when Zverev stopped. This is still the only match he has ever retired from. “I’ve never walked away from a tennis match in my life, except for Roland Garros in 2022, where I really couldn’t walk,” he said. “I don’t want to retire without a reason.”
Vienna, Paris, Turin
Short points against De Minaur kept the pain at bay. “The longer the match goes on, the worse my ankle gets,” he said. “I feel like I was able to play fast enough today that I didn’t have to play long rallies.”
Shanghai has a history for him. He reached the final in 2019, losing to Daniil Medvedev 6-4, 6-1, and advanced to Saturday’s semifinals with a 17-7 record.
After Shanghai, Zverev’s next stops are Vienna and the Rolex Paris Masters ahead of the November 15-22 Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, for which he has already qualified.
