The coaching reset behind Alexander Zverev's two-Slam year

Somewhere in the middle of last year, Alexander Zverev told a press conference that it was becoming difficult to find joy outside the tennis court. He was, by every material measure, in a strong career: six Grand Slam finals across five different years, world number two, an Olympic gold medal, ATP Finals winner, and a career prize-money figure most players will never see. And still, at 28, he had lost every one of those Slam finals, and the summer of 2025 had opened with a first-round exit at Wimbledon.

By the end of 2025 he had made a decision. He would land at Rafael Nadal’s academy in Mallorca to work on things his two lifelong coaches, his father and his brother, had not been able to unstick. And in December, he picked up the phone to Andy Roddick.

Roddick, who won the US Open in 2003 and has spent the years since running the Served podcast and thinking hard about the tour he left, spoke about the phone call this month. Zverev, he said, asked quality questions, was open to advice and criticism, and impressed him with a sincerity he had not expected.

Nine months later, on Sunday afternoon, Zverev walked off Arthur Ashe Stadium with a second Grand Slam trophy of his year.

The reset a top-three player still had to make

For every year of Zverev’s tennis career, his two main coaches have been his father and his older brother. The father was his first coach as a child in Hamburg. The brother, Mischa, is a former top-25 player who has moved into Alexander’s box during the biggest matches. It is not unusual for a top player to keep family in the coaching seat well into a career. Zverev’s decade with that setup reached six Slam finals and never lifted a trophy.

By the summer of 2025, whatever the family setup could do for him had already been done. The Nadal Academy visits were, in Matthew Futterman’s framing for the New York Times this month, a search for answers his father and brother did not seem able to deliver. The Roddick call was a version of the same search. A player at the front of the tour, coached his entire life by two people who know him better than anyone in professional tennis, decided at 28 that he needed a third set of eyes.

Twelve months later he had won Roland Garros against Flavio Cobolli in five sets, lost the Wimbledon final to Jannik Sinner in four, and beaten Ben Shelton in New York in four to close the year out. Three of four Slam finals in a calendar year. Two of them won. By this point in the season he is the first man born in the 1990s to have reached the final of all four majors across his career, and the first German man to win a Slam of any kind since Boris Becker at the Australian Open in 1996.

Hugh Clarke, writing on his tactical Substack this morning, picked out one specific moment as the shape of the change. At 30-30 in the opening set on Sunday, Zverev hit the forehand down the line, a shot he had historically hesitated to hit and which Shelton had baited him into by leaving the court open. Zverev took it and held. Clarke’s read: the forehand has become braver when necessary. One shot in one game, but it is the kind of shot Zverev had not been hitting before, and it came in a Slam final.

On the Served podcast, Roddick raised something most of the US Open coverage has skipped. Zverev manages Type 1 diabetes during matches, checking blood sugar levels at changeovers and adjusting through nine-hour tournament weeks. “I don’t know how it’s not a bigger story,” Roddick said. Zverev’s year has come on top of a physical condition most other players never have to think about.

What Zverev himself said

Zverev, after the trophy ceremony on Sunday, was asked whether he was now the best player in the world. His answer was more measured than the ATP press office might have hoped.

“Right now, at this moment, probably yes,” he said. “Both of them healthy and both of them at the top of their game? Maybe not.”

He added: “If everyone’s healthy I think Jannik is ahead.”

The two Slams have not come through Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz. Alcaraz beat Zverev in the Australian Open semi-final in January in five hours and twenty-seven minutes. Sinner beat him in the Wimbledon final in July. Alcaraz was absent from Wimbledon. Neither ended up in his half at Roland Garros or in New York.

Zverev reassessed his coaching setup, made himself materially better in the areas the year required, and then won the two Slams where the two players ahead of him did not stand in his path. The trophies came with an asterisk Zverev himself has been the first to note.

The lesson for a serious club player

If a top-three player with a career of Grand Slam finals behind him, coached his entire life by two people who understand his game better than anyone alive, can reach the point of picking up the phone to another former Slam champion and buying a plane ticket to a Spanish academy in search of answers, then the club player who has been with the same coach for six years because the booking is easy and the drive is convenient probably owes themselves the same conversation.

We wrote yesterday about when to change your tennis coach, and earlier about how to find a tennis coach who is actually right for your level. Both were written from the club-player side of the equation. Zverev’s year is the same argument at the top of the sport, with a two-Slam receipt on it. Coco Gauff went through her own coaching reset last year. Our piece on it then made the same argument on the women’s side.

What we are doing about it

All Court exists because most players cannot fly to Mallorca or call Andy Roddick. The professional third-set-of-eyes that a top-three player takes for granted is not available at the level almost every serious amateur plays. What we are building is a version of that access. You put your phone on the back fence at your club, record a few games, and a touring professional watches the footage and tells you what to work on before your next session. It is the third-set-of-eyes moment made available at the level of a player who cannot get their local coach to answer messages between Tuesday sessions.

If any of that sounds like the friction you are living, check out our home page.

The moment on Arthur Ashe

In the final game of the US Open final on Sunday, Zverev served for the championship holding serve so routinely that he did not realise he had won it. He looked up at the umpire, checked the scoreboard, raised his arms in celebration, and walked to the net.

The serve had always been his. What the year of new eyes added was the rest: the forehand willing to go down the line at 30-30, the backhand that never breaks, the movement Shelton went out of his way to praise in the losing press conference. We would not, of course, promise a fresh set of eyes on your tennis will get you a Grand Slam. Zverev was not promised one either. He picked up the phone to Andy Roddick anyway.