Alejandro Davidovich Fokina had just dispatched Zverev 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 at Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena when Koenig, calling the match for Tennis TV, zeroed in on the one thing Zverev could not credibly tie to a crowded schedule.
“I think the reason for all those forehand misses… you can’t really blame fatigue on return of serves. He just couldn’t come to grips on the deuce side.”
The read matched the match. Davidovich Fokina kept pulling Zverev wide to the forehand side and dominated his own serve all evening.
Zverev’s defense
Zverev leaned on the calendar in his post-match press conference, pointing to a single day off since the US Open before the Laver Cup, Beijing and Shanghai piled up in quick succession.
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“First, I’m not a robot, I’m a human being, I get tired.”
“After the US Open, I had one day off in total. I think I played a lot of tennis, which is very, very positive because that means I played well.”
He also set the bar high enough to clear it himself.
“I feel like I’ve actually, in a way, maybe overachieved this week because of how much tennis I played.”
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“I carried a little bit of injury, I carried fatigue into the tournament, and I’m okay to lose to a player like this today.”
A familiar pattern
Less than two weeks earlier, Zverev had reached for a different reason after a China Open quarter-final loss to Novak Djokovic. That night in Beijing, he pointed at the conditions.
“It was quite cold out there and the ball wasn’t very bouncy,” he told reporters.
Djokovic, who had played in the same cold, had already taken the blame for his own slow start with a short “my fault.”
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Replies on social media, collected by Sportskeeda, ran from “stop playing the victim card” to “he always has some excuse; can’t he just say that the other guy played better and that’s it?”, with one post simply calling it “another excuse more from our friend Zverev.”
Davidovich Fokina’s Shanghai title
For the man on the other side of the net, the week ended with the biggest trophy of his career. Davidovich Fokina backed up the Zverev result by coming back from a set and a break down against Rafael Jodar in Sunday’s final, winning 1-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 for his first ATP Masters 1000 title.
The run stretched his winning streak on Chinese soil to ten matches, dating back to his ATP 250 trophy in Chengdu earlier this autumn.
Zverev said he will take ten days off before his next tournament.
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