The 21st century
Germany · born Moscow, 1987 · left-handed · serve-and-volleyer and Eastbourne champion 2018
All playersBack to the rankings
1
ATP singles title, Eastbourne 2018, aged 30
8
Years between his first ATP final and his first title
65 of 118
Points won at the net in his defeat of world No. 1 Andy Murray, Australian Open 2017
25
Career-high ATP ranking, July 2017
4
ATP doubles titles, the first on grass at Halle in 2008
Mischa Zverev was born in Moscow in 1987 and grew up in Hamburg after his family moved to Germany in 1991. His father, Alexander Zverev senior, a former Russian player, coached him, and his younger brother Alexander also plays on the tour. A left-hander, he was ranked No. 3 in the world as a junior and broke into the top 100 in 2007.
He won his first ATP title in doubles on the grass at Halle in 2008 with Mikhail Youzhny and reached his first singles final at Metz in 2010. A run of injuries then pushed him down the rankings, at one point to around No. 1100, and he later said he had thought of quitting.
He came back in 2016 with an attacking serve-and-volley game. At the 2017 Australian Open he beat the world No. 1 Andy Murray to reach the quarter-finals, and in July 2017 he reached a career-high No. 25. He won his only ATP singles title at Eastbourne in 2018. The ATP now lists him as inactive.
| Eastbourne 2018 | Unseeded and ranked 67, beat Lukáš Lacko 6-4, 6-4 in the final in 1 hour 37 minutes, serving and volleying throughout, three days before Wimbledon. With Alexander's titles that year, they were the first brothers to win tour singles titles in the same season since Emilio and Javier Sánchez in 1989 |
|---|---|
| Halle doubles | 2008: won with Mikhail Youzhny, beating Lukáš Dlouhý and Leander Paes 3-6, 6-4, 10-3. 2017: runner-up with his brother Alexander |
| Wimbledon | Best results third round, in 2008, when he retired against Stan Wawrinka, and in 2017 as the 27th seed; the 2017 run took him to his career-high ranking |
| Halle | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Men's doubles | with Mikhail Youzhny |
| Eastbourne | ||
| 2018 | Men's singles | |
Leading grass titles only: the grass majors, tour-level grass events since 1968 and the leading grass championships before 1968. †single source; ‡ sources disagree. Roll of champions
"For many years I didn't believe in myself. I didn't think I was going to do it, especially when I was ranked 1100."
The person behind the player.
Australian Open, 2017
Ranked 50, he beat the world No. 1 Andy Murray 7-5, 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 by serving and volleying and slicing. "Honestly, I don't know, it was like I was in a little coma," he told Jim Courier on court. "Honestly, there were a few points where I didn't know how I pulled it off."
Source: Tennis.comAustralian Open, 2017
"I believed that playing serve and volley against him and slicing a lot, trying to destroy his rhythm, was going to work, which it did in the end," he said after beating Murray. He lost to Roger Federer in the quarter-finals.
Source: Tennis.comEastbourne, June 2018
He compared the title with his win over Murray: "there you win a match, you're still in it and the tournament's not over. But here you're the last one standing at the end of the week and you have the trophy."
Source: Tennis-X2015
Three years before Eastbourne he had considered giving up the game after a series of injuries. He credited his family, his brother and his team for telling him he could still achieve big things.
Source: Tennis-XFree membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
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