Six-time Grand Slam champion Boris Becker (54) clearly criticized tennis Olympic champion Alexander Zverev after his knockout round at the Australian Open.
"I haven't seen Zverev so passively for a very long time.
You can lose and play badly, but you can always try hard and keep your soul on the pitch.
We missed that today," said Becker at Eurosport about the "tough smack".
"This is too little"
The Melbourne winner from 1991 and 1996 demanded from Zverev: "He has to think about what happened there.
He was brimming with confidence before but something has happened from Australia these weeks.
The round of 16 is not enough for a top player like Zverev. ”After a mysterious performance, the Hamburg player failed in three sets against Denis Shapovalov (Canada / No. 14).
While Germany's athlete of the year often plays big in tournaments with two winning sets such as the Olympic Games or the ATP Finals, he often lacks conviction against the top players in the Grand Slams.
Zverev's balance sheet reads devastatingly: The third in the world rankings has only won one of the past eight matches against professionals in the top 20, in total he is 4:15 victories in these statistics.
The 2020 US Open final remains Zverev's best Grand Slam result.
The last German winner of the four most important tennis tournaments of the year is still Becker, who triumphed three times in Wimbledon (1985, 1986, 1989), once at the US Open (1989) and twice in Australia.