As we enter the heart of the tennis season, this top 10 player could see his dynamics disrupted due to extra-sporting problems.
While the clay court season began with the Monte-Carlo masters 1000, the Roland-Garros tournament will, like every year, be the highlight of the season. The grand slam tournament promises to be contested, while Rafael Nadal is uncertain, Novak Djokovic less imperial than in previous years and Carlos Alcaraz is not at his best physically.
Unusually, this season, the players on the circuit will pass through the Porte d’Auteuil courts twice. After the Paris tournament and after Wimbledon, they will indeed return there, the tennis sessions of the Olympic Games tournament having been scheduled at Roland-Garros, between July 27 and August 10. The American hard court tour will then follow until the US Open at the beginning of September.
But for this tennis player, the season could be disrupted by extra-sporting problems. The German Alexander Zverev is in fact indicted by the Berlin courts for domestic violence. His trial will begin on May 31, in the middle of the first week of Roland-Garros. This date is the first in a series of hearings which will last until July 19.
Zverev is accused of “physically mistreating a woman during an argument and harming her health.” It was his former partner Brenda Patea who filed a complaint against the 26-year-old. This trial is being held due to Zverev’s challenge to a criminal order, issued in October 2023, ordering him to pay 450,000 euros.
This is not the first time that Alexander Zverev has been implicated in a case of domestic violence. An investigation was in fact opened by the ATP in 2020 following a complaint from another former partner of the German, the player Olga Sharypova. The ATP ultimately closed the investigation due to lack of sufficient evidence.
This trial in the heart of the season could impact Alexander Zverev’s performance. the German had returned to his best level after his injury that occurred at Roland Garros in 2022 against Rafael Nadal, climbing back into the top five in the world. A possible conviction could also compromise his chances of participating in the Olympic Games, if the verdict were to be rendered on the last scheduled day of trial, July 19. The Olympic tournament begins ten days later, on July 27, and Alexander Zverev, as German number one, should be present in Paris in singles, and possibly in doubles.
