Alexander Zverev isn’t the Grand Slam choker you think he is

I first remember hearing about Alexander Zverev at the 2017 US Open, when I was 14 years old. I was walking around the grounds and saw that there was a “Zverev” playing — this was probably in the second round, but I’m not exactly sure. Knowing that Alexander Zverev was the fourth seed at the tournament, I figured this would be a major match, and Zverev had shot up the rankings since 2016, yet I had never seen him live; so I headed over to see it. The court, weirdly, was not full.

I have no idea how long it took me to realize that I was not watching Alexander Zverev, but his brother Mischa, who was nine years older, the 23rd seed rather than the fourth seed. Mischa went an absolute Cinderella run through the bracket, losing in the fourth round but upsetting 10 seed John Isner on the way. Mischa never exactly broke into the top levels of men’s tennis, but he was a very good player in his day. Alexander, meanwhile, was upset in the second round by Borna Coric. And thus my introduction to one of the most successful men’s tennis players of my lifetime began with a misunderstanding.

Depending on your point of view, Zverev has always suffered from a sort of mistaken identity. If you only follow the four Grand Slams, you may view Zverev as a sort of cannon fodder for the true elites, able to make deep runs in major tournaments but never win them. Until the 2026 French Open, he was 0-4 in major finals and 4-6 in semifinals — a remarkable number of appearances without a win. If you’re an elite tennis enjoyer and follow the whole tour, you’ll take major issue with this interpretation, since Zverev is a frequent winner on the singles circuit, having won 25 singles titles and the fifth-most prize money of all time. But he couldn’t quite shake the choke-artist moniker.

That all changed for Zverev when he captured his first Grand Slam, but like many who snare their white whale, there’s always a bigger fish. He was fortunate that Carlos Alcaraz missed the tournament with injury and Jannik Sinner lost in one of the biggest upsets in tennis history. Sinner didn’t have to beat Novak Djokovic either, only playing one top-10 player: Flavio Cobolli, the whole way through. If Zverev wants to ascend and not just be one of those “oh yeah, he won that random French Open,” he’ll have to beat the best.

If this were any other player, I would start the cliché: “there is no evidence to suggest that (insert player) can beat Alcaraz or Sinner in a five-set match,” but that’s actually not true for Zverev. Yes, since Sinner lost to Zverev at the 2023 US Open, the Italian has triumphed 10 consecutive times; that’s not great. But Zverev has basically split the Alcaraz matchup since 2023, and their last two Grand Slam meetings (both won by Alcaraz) were five-set trench warfare.

It would make sense for men’s players to struggle with the transition to Grand Slam tennis given the five-set format is different from everything else on tour and because Zverev took 42 Slams to win his first, it would be tempting to just assign that reason and not interrogate it further. But Zverev has an excellent winning percentage in Grand Slams: 76 percent, higher than his overall winning percentage of 71 percent. But most top players actually have a better winning percentage in Slams simply because inferior opponents can’t just get lucky and scrape out two sets against them. That’s the thing with five setters: you can’t fake it.

Zverev is perhaps the only player on tour who actually has evidence to suggest he wouldn’t have to fake it to beat the best. And after a lifetime of questioning if Zverev had it in him, I’ve somehow come to believe he actually does; he has a mature game that blends power and range like very few players in history. He has a serve that not even Sinner or Alcaraz has access to, getting in 72.6 percent of first serves that can reach above 140 miles per hour. That type of technology makes him a real threat to win the 2026 US Open, perhaps over some of the true top dogs. And with how many chances he’s had at it, I almost expect it to happen. Eventually.