NEW YORK — When Alexander Zverev plays his quarterfinal match at the U.S. Open Tuesday, there will be several crucial moments and they will all play out the same way — in one sense.
Zverev will look up at his support team in their box. He will meet his coach’s eyes and they will know exactly what they are saying to each other, even though no actual words will need to be exchanged.
Why would they? The message will be coming from the person who has known the 27-year-old longer than just about anyone else – his father, also Alexander, who can speak to him with nods, tilts of the head, or a widening of the eyes.
“Some players, if they have their parents as coaches, there’s a lot of arguing,” world No. 4 Zverev, whose elder brother, Mischa, also coaches him, said this weekend after he beat Brandon Nakashima in the fourth round. “There’s a lot of, you know, not healthy stuff. I have to say that’s not the case with us at all. We understand each other.”
That’s the advantage of being coached by your father. But the disadvantages have also been on full display this season – and probably a good deal longer – courtesy of world No. 11 Stefanos Tsitsipas,and his complicated relationship with his father, Apostolos. They broke up as coach and charge in early August, following an ugly confrontation during Tsitsipas’ loss to Kei Nishikori, the world No. 576, at the National Bank Open in Montreal.
Tsitsipas told his father, who has never been shy about getting in his ear during matches, to leave his seat in the middle of the loss. Then he blamed Apostolos for his career stagnation and his struggles with his forehand. The next day, he announced that his dad would remain his travel companion but would no longer coach him.
Apostolos took a different view. He did not accompany his eldest son to the U.S. Open, choosing instead to work with his youngest boy, Pavlos, who is battling his way through the sport’s Futures circuit. He had been coaching and traveling with Stefanos for the past 10 years.
“I just need to move on now,” Tsitsipas said during an interview last month at the West Side Tennis Club in New York’s Forest Hills district. The club was the home of the U.S. Open until the short move to Flushing Meadows in the 1970s and Tsitsipas was there to practice for the Ultimate Tennis Showdown, an innovative and lucrative competition established by Patrick Mouratoglou.
“I need to grow up as well and take decisions based on my own gut feeling,” he said.
