Michael Stich misses further development of Alexander Zverev’s game · Tennisnet.com

general

Michael Stitch gave his current assessment on the Sky podcast ‘Maddog & Wingman’. Alexander Zverev The 1991 Wimbledon winner sees no significant improvement in the 26-year-old and sees a deficit in the world number seven’s ability to withstand criticism.

In addition to his former Davis Cup teammate, Patrick Kunin, reporting on the ATP Finals as a commentator for Sky TV, Michael Stich has also followed events in Turin closely. When rating Alexander Zverev’s current performance, the 55-year-old set the highest standards imaginable. Compared to Novak Djokovic, a seven-time finals winner, the 2021 Olympic champion is “really moving away.” “From my point of view, he hasn’t been able to really develop his game in the last three or four years. Only he knows if he can and wants to do it.

Reload video content…

Stitch certainly sees opportunities to make that happen with the Hamburg native: “He has proven over the past six years that he can beat everyone and play tennis at the highest level. He hasn’t forgotten that, and he will be able to do that next year as well.”

The 1993 Davis Cup winner also wants the two-time ATP champion to take a different approach to accepting analyzes of his game. Zverev often mistakenly sees these as “condemnation or criticism”, although in most cases they are well-intentioned. “We actually hope he takes this next step to become a better tennis player. I think he always sees it as a criticism of himself and his style of play, which it’s really not.”

Cohen puts it in perspective

Patrick Kunin had a slightly different opinion, at least for this year’s season, given the ATP titles in Hamburg and Chengdu and the semi-finals at Roland Garros: “It’s been a strong comeback year. It was not expected, it has to be said very clearly.” “He was in the finals. If someone had said to him in the summer: ‘Come on, boy, you’re in the top 8 in Torino’, he probably would have looked a bit strange at first. But he did.”