What made Alexander Zverev lose his cool at Cincinnati Masters?

James Richardson 17 Aug 2023 12:20 PM

Alexander Zverev making his mark in the ATP rankings

Former Cincinnati Masters champion Alexander Zverev lost his cool during his Round of 32 match against Yoshihito Nishioka in Ohio.

Zverev took to loudly remonstrating with the referee after he had his serve disrupted by music coming from one of the other courts.

The German took this up with the umpire in an angry rant.

Zverev would acknowledge that it wasn’t the chair umpire’s fault and had the supervisor called down to the court.

“It’s not your fault. This is ridiculous because we’re playing a Masters, we’re not playing a 250. I won this tournament, you know, it’s not like just a random tournament that we’re just playing,” Zverev said.

“There’s literally music coming on break point when I was serving and on break point when he was serving. And the thing is, the distance of the music is exactly the same from that corner as from that corner,” the 26-year-old added.

Chair umpire Aurelie Tourte called her supervisor Gerry Armstrong down to the court to becalm Zverev.

Zverev felt that it was disrespectful to have top ten players and former Masters champions playing on a court that suffers from such musical interruptions.

“Gerry, we’re playing in a Masters series,” Zverev said in discussion with the supervisor at the Masters event.

“This court today is me, Casper Ruud, Holger Rune, Monfils. We were all players who either won Masters series or were playing 10 or more years on the court. I have to serve break point against me at 5-4 with the music blasting and I have to return at 5-5 with break point with me with the music blasting as well,” Zverev said when talking to the supervisor.

Alexander Zverev was somewhat distracted by the off-court situation, but it had little to no effect on his play. Zverev easily defeated Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan in the Round of 32 with a score of 7-5, 6-4. Zverev needed just 65 minutes to defeat Nishioka.

Earlier, Zverev defeated Grigor Dimitrov, a past champion of the Cincinnati Open, 6-2, 6-2 in the Round of 64. The 16th-seeded German will play the 2019 champion Russian Daniil Medvedev in his next match in the Round of 16.

Zverev is out to regain the kind of form that powered him to the Cincinatti Masters title in 2021 before he was laid low by his horror injury at the French Open.

His clash with Medvedev will be the 16th of their career head-to-head with the Russian leading 9-6.