“If I win Grand Slams… it was all worth it” – Zverev reveals how ankle injury has made him stronger

Alexander Zverev was, quite possibly, on the cusp of something truly extraordinary on June 3rd 2022, before a severe ankle roll brutally brought his Roland-Garros campaign to an abrupt end.

The German was going toe-to-toe with Rafael Nadal in the semi-finals of that tournament, pushing the Spaniard to the extremes in a match that was delicately poised. Zverev had narrowly lost the first set on a knife-edge tiebreak before navigating his way to a second-set breaker.

As it became increasingly clear that Nadal needed to close out the match without being dragged much further than three sets, the outcome of the semi-final heavily depended on the result of that second-set tiebreak.

Having led by a break in each set, Zverev was matching the clay-court maestro both physically and technically when the freak injury struck at the climax of the second set, ending not only his hugely impressive Roland-Garros campaign, but also his 2022 season.

“After an injury like that, you really appreciate the hard days, the fun days. You enjoy being on the court,” Zverev told the press in Vienna ahead of this year’s Erste Bank Open.

“Most players realize this once they stop playing tennis because they have not experienced this major injury. I realised it earlier, and I’m grateful for it.

“But I want to get back to where I was.”

Requiring surgery on damaged ankle ligaments after the injury, Zverev was off tour for six months before making his return. It wrote off the rest of his 2022 campaign and plummeted his ranking from a high of No 2 in the world to a low of 27th nearly a year later as he continued his comeback.

What was most devastating for the German was that his tennis felt as though it was hitting its peak just as injury struck.

Zverev’s 2021 season had ended with an ATP Finals title (courtesy of back-to-back victories over Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev), an Olympic gold medal, two Masters 1000 titles and a pair of 500-level tournament wins.

Prior to his meeting with Nadal in the last four of Roland-Garros in 2022, he’d also taken down the seemingly irrepressible Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals.

Zverev given a fresh perspective after injury

Yet, despite the pain – both figurative and literal – Zverev has found positives to take from the experience.

“I didn’t want this injury to happen, obviously,” he explained.

“But it made me grow. It made me realise what tennis really means. If I get back to this level, if I win Grand Slams and become world No 1, maybe I will look back and say that it was all worth it.”

It should be of little surprise how quickly the world No 10 has regained his form and fitness. Over the course of his comeback season, Zverev has notched another two ATP titles to take his tally to 21.

Already a major finalist in New York in 2020, and having achieved a career-high of No 2 in the world, the two remaining items to tick off on his CV are topping the ATP rankings and winning an elusive maiden Grand Slam title.

Should Zverev achieve these goals, albeit perhaps later than many expected, that chastening experience on Court Philippe-Chatrier may unexpectedly go down as the vital lesson Zverev can point to that allowed him to finally fulfil his true potential.

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