Alexander Zverev experiences a bad end to the impressive French Open. The best German tennis pro injured himself in the semifinals and will be out longer. Regardless of the emotional low blow, Zverev has reached a career high point: the man from Hamburg is now second in the world tennis rankings.
In the middle of the longest injury break of his career, tennis Olympic champion Alexander Zverev has achieved the best placement of his career so far. In the world rankings published on Monday, the 25-year-old is in second place. Only the Russian Daniil Medvedev, who replaced the Serb Novak Djokovic at the top, still ranks ahead of Zverev.
The reason for the change at the top is the fact that Djokovic lost 2,000 points for winning the French Open last year. The second Grand Slam tournament of the season took place a week later in 2021. This year Djokovic had already failed in Paris in the quarterfinals. Djokovic, who led the men’s world rankings longer than any other colleague, will continue to lose ground: since no world ranking points will be awarded at the third Grand Slam tournament of the year as a sanction for the exclusion of Russian professionals from the ATP, the defending champion will be also lose a lot of points in London.
Zverev will not be very happy about second place. Born in Hamburg, he tore all the collateral ligaments in his right foot in the semifinals of the French Open against eventual winner Rafael Nadal and has already had an operation. Before the serious injury, Zverev had stated that one of his goals for the season was to reach number one in the world rankings – the Olympic champion would have succeeded if he had won the French Open. But a fatal slide after almost three hours in the semi-final match against Nadal caused the painful end for the big plans. Zverev will definitely miss the lawn classic in Wimbledon (June 27th to July 10th). The German number one is hoping for a comeback at the US Open (August 29 to September 11).
Second best German professional is Oscar Otte. Otte from Cologne climbed to 51st place after reaching the semi-finals at the Weissenhof in Stuttgart. This is also Otte’s highest position in the world rankings so far. The only German to date at the top of the world rankings was Boris Becker. Becker led the rankings for twelve weeks in 1991.
