Alexander Zverev is often termed as the ‘leader of the Next Gen’ and is regarded as future world no.1 but his career graph till now does not justify this. He crashed out early in the Wimbledon 2019 and it was felt that he has miles to go before he can justify the hype around him.
Will Boris Becker be the next coach of Zverev?
The great Boris Becker says that Ivan Lendl (another great from the past and current coach of Zverev) must take a large portion of the blame for the failures of the world no.5 on the big stages (Grand Slams).
Talking to a popular website, Becker said:
“At the start of this week I said nothing would please me more than to see some of the young players in the men’s game contesting the semi-finals or the final; my prayers do not seem to have been answered. So many of the likes of Stefanos Tsitsipas, Denis Shapovalov and Alex Zverev have ended up falling short of the hopes we had for them.”
Becker then spoke about the ‘mentorship issues’ and he did not like that fact that Lendl was not there for 2 months before Wimbledon.
He said:
“I have a lot of time for Zverev who I know through my work in German tennis, and he has been doing some work with Ivan Lendl, but it did not help that Ivan was not around for the two months before this tournament. You either have your mentor around or you don’t. I do think it is important to surround yourself with people who know what it takes to win a major championship but it needs to be done properly.”
Zverev himself seems to partly blame the coach for his failures:
“Sometimes we go on the practice court. The training is over two hours and for half an hour he stands with his back to me and tells me about his round of golf.”
Lendl may be part of the problem but there have been other issues with the German as well, the world no.5 was involved in a nasty lawsuit with agent Patricio Apey and the split with his girlfriend Olya Sharipova has affected his tennis.
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