He had it all: talent, good looks and a chance to be the world No 1. But then Alexander Zverev’s life went to pieces…

The tennis player Alexander Zverev has blue eyes and shaggy blond hair and is 6ft 7in tall. His legs are stilts, and his face, journalists have pointed out, is that of an Abercrombie & Fitch model. Zverev actually has a modelling contract with Zegna, the Italian fashion brand, partly because he is a well-known tennis player, but also because he looks less like a tennis player and more like a luxury clothes horse.

Zverev is 22. He joined the pro circuit in 2013, when he was 16. At the end of 2018, he was ranked the fourth best men’s tennis player in the world, behind Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer – the big three – but ahead of younger challengers. He’d recently won the ATP Finals, in London, the so-called fifth grand slam, becoming the youngest player to win the tournament in a decade. As a kid he’d been the world junior No 1 and a junior grand slam champion. For years, fans had thought of him as tennis’s crown prince – the prodigal heir. Both Nadal and Djokovic had hinted at Zverev becoming their eventual successor. Here, finally, after the failed attempts of other once up-and-coming players, was a talent poised to dethrone the game’s elder greats. At the end of one 2018 tournament, Boris Becker announced: “A star has arrived.”

For a while, life was good. Life was trouble-free! Zverev would appear at tournaments, project supreme self-confidence, absorb any and all stress (“Pressure is a privilege,” he says, in that throwaway, sportsperson way), and rain down hard, flat serves at 140mph.

And then, just like that, the narrative flipped.

In January last year, Zverev broke up with his agent, Patricio Apey, a former player, with whom Zverev had worked since he was 15. (What began as a tiff evolved into a protracted legal battle, which is ongoing, even now.) Then, in short order, he separated from his girlfriend, the Russian player Olya Sharypova; his father, himself a former pro, as well as Zverev’s long-time coach, fell ill and returned home to Germany, where Zverev grew up; and he endured a strange period in which Ivan Lendl was technically hired as his coach, but often failed to turn up to his games. For a while last year, Zverev didn’t have a coach. Pro tennis players often arrive at tournaments with an almighty entourage. At two competitions in 2019, Zverev appeared alone.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Net call: losing to Novak Djokovic at the 2019 French Open. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

During the first half of the 2019 season, Zverev’s performances teetered, then collapsed over the edge. He lost in the second round at Indian Wells, in March. He lost at a competition in Miami (first round, same month), against a player ranked 155 in the world. And then in Marrakech (second round), Monte Carlo (second round), Barcelona (first round), Rome (first round) and Stuttgart (first round). Zverev had been tipped to win competitions, not spill out of opening rounds. But what had once seemed so easy – the winning – all of a sudden became very hard. You couldn’t call it a slump, really. In six months, he barely won.

It wasn’t hard to imagine Zverev suffering a kind of crisis. His self-belief wavered. He became dejected and impetuous and difficult to be around. At Wimbledon, last July, he lost in the first round to the Czech qualifier Jiri Vesely (wily journeyman, rank 124). After the game, Zverev slunk into a press conference. His hair was roughly tousled and his blue eyes dulled – a surly, sorry wreck. “I’m not very high on confidence right now,” he said, and then, for emphasis: “My confidence is below zero.” When a reporter asked why, Zverev replied: “Because I haven’t won much this year,” and looked away in disgust. But then he elaborated a little. “I get down on myself a lot,” he said, before alluding to personal problems. When he later mentioned he might need a break from the game, it wasn’t entirely clear if he meant a holiday, or if he planned to walk away from tennis and never come back.

I meet Zverev in a busy hotel restaurant in central London. It’s a Tuesday in November, mid-morning. He has arrived in head-to-toe tracksuit, shaggy hair, wiry, not powerfully built, tall enough for people to make a big deal of his height. Around us, staff are clearing away breakfast things. We are here specifically to talk about his year. The horrible professional descent. How something like that even happens.

I suggest he’s had a rough time. Later he’ll call it “a grind”, but for now he just nods. “I had a stretch where I was probably one of the best players in the world,” he begins. “I really felt like I was the best player in the world… and then, all of a sudden, I don’t have a manager. Everything a manager has to do, I had to do myself.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘There’s nobody in the world that puts more pressure on myself than me’: Alex Zverev. Photograph: Perou/The Observer

He says this in the most straightforward way – a kind of it is what it is – and then he describes, plainly and rationally, a months-long period during which he performed several different jobs all at once: the job of being a player, and a manager, and a coach, and an assistant, and a second assistant, booking hotel rooms, thrashing out contracts, playing at tournaments, registering for new tournaments, liaising with lawyers, liaising with tour officials, practising, calling in gear. “I didn’t have anybody to do the little things,” he says. Like respond to emails. So many emails! “You know, doing that every week, it’s not easy, concentration-wise.”

These days, an athlete’s life is managed almost entirely by other people. Players don’t tend to negotiate deals, or sweet-talk sponsors, or book flights – managers do. It’s a strange and necessary kind of privilege: employ people to manage your affairs so you can focus on managing your performance levels. You can’t be your own manager and your own assistant and still be a top-10 professional tennis player.

The fun left me. Not only in tennis. For quite a while I was not myself

In 2018, as it had been since he was young, everything had been taken care of for him. “All I had to do was wake up, practise, do my gym sessions, and go back to bed,” he says. “And it made life very easy, you know? You don’t have to think about anything apart from the sport you really love, the sport that since you were a little kid you’ve always wanted to do…” He pauses. “You know, tennis is a tough sport physically and mentally. Mentally it’s draining. You have to focus. It’s a one-on-one sport. You can’t think about anything else. And all of a sudden, before and after matches, I have to do all these different things?” Emails. Contracts. Phone calls. The lawyers. “You go on court and your mind’s not there.”

He recalls spending eight hours in a legal meeting the day before his opening game at a tournament in Rome (first-round loss). His lawyers had flown in last-minute. Surprise! “I have no idea of the language they’re speaking” – the legalese – “because it’s different.” The following day was a write-off; lingering stress seeped into his game like water into cracks. “I was on the court and I was just absolutely…” He’d barely said one word to a lawyer before 2018. “I had no energy. Nothing inside myself.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I didn’t have anybody to do the little things’: with former coach Ivan Lendl. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

Zverev was known on tour for a brutal competitive streak and extreme self-confidence, but suddenly he thought: maybe I’m just not as good as these other guys. “You know, most of the time I was in a bad mood when I was on the tennis court,” he says. “The fun left me. Not only in tennis, but in everything I was doing. For quite a while I was not myself.” He became angry and irritable. “I’m more tired,” he recalls. “I’m not into it as much.” He’d arrive at practice and think, “I kind of don’t want to be here.”

During a first-round game at a tournament in Cincinnati, in August last year, he served 20 double faults – rock bottom for a pro. He would reach the baseline, toss the ball, and lose focus. “I didn’t all of a sudden forget how to serve,” he says. “It’s just, things play on your mind. And at that moment…” He pauses, then reframes. “I was always a person who loved the tough moments. That’s where the tennis gets interesting. That’s what you play for. But this year? I really, really struggled in those kinds of situations.”

He thought about taking that break. Maybe he could end the season early and start fresh in the new year. But, no. “I wanted to improve,” he says. “I want to go further up the rankings.” A big slump. “And I went backwards.”

Here’s the thing: the real reason we’re meeting now is because – guess what? – Alexander Zverev is somehow, miraculously, against all odds, back on track! In October, he reached the final of the Shanghai Masters and the semi-final of the China Open, in Beijing – top-tier events. He’s in London to defend his title at the ATP Finals – where he will thrash Rafael Nadal, but lose in the semi-finals, to Dominic Thiem – to which only the best eight players on the men’s tour get invited. (Zverev finished the season, thanks to his late surge, ranked 7 in the world.) By the time this conversation is published, he will have toured south America with Roger Federer, played his part in breaking the record for the largest crowd attendance at a tennis match (42,217, at a stadium in Mexico City), gently consoled Federer after one of their exhibition matches almost evolved into a riot, loosened up during the off-season break, represented Germany at the ATP Cup (first match: a loss in which Zverev, perhaps not all the way back, served several double faults, angrily smashed a racket against the floor, and was later described by one newspaper as a “tennis hothead”) and returned to the tour ready for the Australian Open, later this month.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘You know, in my mind, I’m not that young any more, and I need to start improving’: Alexander Zverev has his eye focused on tennis’s No 1 spot. Photograph: Perou/The Observer

He has had time to reflect on all of this, too: the strange, unexpected upturn in form. He has taken his whole season apart and analysed it piece by piece. And what he has come to understand is this: all he ever needed to do was – his words – “Let go.”

He’s right, in a way, about the letting go. After Wimbledon he did take a break – a short holiday. And then he announced, to himself more than anyone else, that if he continued to play so poorly he’d finish his season early and go again in 2020. “That loosened me up a little bit,” he says. “It made me not think about anything.” He relaxed into the routines he developed early in his career, when he arrived at tournaments hopeful, but not expecting to win.

Other people my age are finishing college and trying to find a job

“I was just, like, ‘Hey, I’m going to enjoy playing the best players in the world, enjoy being out here, hopefully give myself the best chances to win matches.’” The pressure lifted. “The thing is, there’s nobody in the world that puts more pressure on myself than me.” And he grew up, maybe, though: “It’s never nice to say about yourself that you’ve grown up.”

But letting go isn’t the full story. In August, Zverev signed papers with a new management company, Team8, a firm established by Roger Federer. (Zverev did not organise this interview, his new publicist did.) His father recovered and returned to the tour – a calming presence. And he began dating the German supermodel Brenda Patea, who now appears in Zverev’s Instagram feed – modern love – and who is as leggy and good-looking as he is. Slowly, a kind of stability returned. Whatever personal and professional foundations crumbled at the beginning of last year – no management, no support staff, no partner – Zverev has painstakingly rebuilt, brick by brick.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It’s never nice to say about yourself that you’ve grown up’: as a boy with his family. Photograph: Nadine Rupp/Bongarts/Getty Images

So yes, he “let go”. He thought less about things. He relaxed. He took the pressure off. And it helped. But he did that only because he’d once again formed a loyal supporting staff, which provided him the opportunity to. Which is what it means to grow up, isn’t it? Realising you can’t do everything yourself.

Maybe because he’s so tall, or maybe because he started playing tennis professionally at 14 and it seems like he’s been on the circuit for years (which, technically, he has), people forget Zverev is just 22. “Other people my age would be finishing college and trying to find a job.” But he doesn’t see himself as a young man. “You know, in my mind, I’m not that young any more, and I need to start improving.” It is his responsibility, he thinks, now that he’s back to something close to his best, now that’s he’s let go, to fulfill his potential. “The other guys” – Federer, Nadal, Djokovic – “have been there for 20 years. They know how to get it done. They know what it takes to win. Are we going to take over at some point? Yes! We have to! They’re not going to be there for ever… And anyway, I actually don’t want those guys to retire. I just want to be better than them. I’m not sitting at home and thinking, ‘OK, I still have, what, two, three years until they retire, and then I’m going to take over tennis.’ No, that’s not how it is.”

He adds: “If we just wait for them to retire, all we’re going to hear for the rest of our careers is, ‘Yeah, but those guys were better than you.’ I don’t want to be the No 1 in the world because other people aren’t playing. I want to be No 1 because I’m better than everybody else.”