Alexander Zverev won the last match in Bercy, as Ugo Humbert’s fiery fairytale run ended with a weary thud

Twenty-thousand French tennis fans chanted “Yoo-go!” as one.

When that didn’t work, they clapped and roared and cheered whenever they had even the slightest opportunity.

When that didn’t work, they stomped their feet and banged on instruments and tried to make as much noise as possible, even if it didn’t have anything to do with what was happening on court.

Nothing the capacity crowd inside Accor Arena in Paris did was enough to revive its hero du jour, Ugo Humbert.

The lean and fiery Frenchman had a career week in Bercy, winning three three-set matches, upsetting Carlos Alcaraz, thrilling the audience and annoying his opponents with his extravagant celebrations, and reaching his first Masters 1000 final after eight years on tour. But the 26-year-old’s run finished with a thud, rather than a fairytale ending on Sunday, when he lost 6-2, 6-2 to Alexander Zverev in 75 one-sided minutes.

“I’m extremely happy to have played in this final,” Humbert told his supporters afterward. “To have my family and team with me the whole week has been incredible. It’s for moments like this why I do this every day, why I train.”

Humbert’s dream ended in part because his lanky body ran out of energy, and his racquet ran out of low-percentage magic. But it ended in larger part because he played a superior opponent, who was at the end of his own confidence-building week, and season.

A year ago, these two played on the same court, and Zverev edged Humbert in a third-set tiebreaker. But that was the Zverev of 12 months ago, before he won a tour-leading 66 matches in 2024, made the Roland Garros final and Australian Open semifinals, and won a Masters 1000 in Rome.

Other than that title, though, this has been a close-but-not-quite year for the German. On Sunday, he completed the job with perhaps his cleanest big-match performance of the year. He won 21 of 23 points on his first serve, made just six unforced errors, and didn’t face a break point. According to Zverev, the best thing he did was keep the fans safely in their seats by breaking early in each set.

“I knew I had to play like this to win today,” Zverev said. “Ugo is an incredible player, but here in Paris, he plays even better than he usually does and I knew that. Once the crowd gets involved, it’s going to be difficult. So, I had to take that away early, and I did, so I’m happy about that.”

The victory gave Zverev the men’s lead in match wins this season with 66, one more than Jannik Sinner. It also means he’ll be the second seed at the ATP Finals in Turin next week. The career-threatening setback he suffered when he tore ligaments in his leg at another Paris venue in 2022 is fully behind him.

“It was not 100% guaranteed that I would be back at this level after Roland Garros two years ago, when I basically broke everything possible in my ankle,” Zverev said. “So, to win this title here in Paris means the world to me.”

The next steps for the 27-year-old are clear: Winning his first major and challenging the two guys who split them between themselves this season, Sinner and Alcaraz. What would get him over that hump? Watching him in Bercy this week, I wondered whether his backhand might actually be ... too good.

The modern baseline game is about constructing points so you hit as many forehands as possible. Zverev has never felt the need to do that because (a) his backhand is one of the world’s best, and (b) his forehand is the wing that breaks down when he’s nervous. You could see that again in the semifinals in Bercy. When he got tight trying to close out Holger Rune, it was his forehand that suddenly went haywire.

But when Zverev is feeling confident, the opposite becomes true. He hits his forehand with a little more risk, a little more pace, and a little less margin, and it transforms into his most dangerous shot. What would his game be like if he did hunt forehands, and used his serve—one of the game’s best—to set them up? Maybe at 6’6” he’s too tall to do all the backpedaling necessary to make that happen; his fellow towering Top Tenner, Daniil Medvedev, also isn’t a forehand-first guy. But the player who beat Zverev at Wimbledon and the US Open this season, Taylor Fritz, is 6’5” and has made his forehand into his most imposing weapon in recent years.

For now, Zverev moves on to an even bigger tournament in Turin, feeling confident in his game as it is, and likely feeling as if he has an opportunity to give Sinner and Alcaraz a run to close the season.

“It was not 100% guaranteed that I would be back at this level after Roland Garros two years ago, when I basically broke everything possible in my ankle, so to win this title here in Paris means the world to me.” Alexander Zverev

As for Bercy, this was the end of the line. The tournament will move to a bigger arena in the suburb of Nanterre in 2025. Hopefully, as I wrote on Friday, the lively, clubby, intimate vibe from Accor Arena travels with it. In Humbert, the crowd gave one of its countryman one last push toward a title. Despite their roars and cheers and “allez”s and foot stomps, he came up just short.

By now, after decades of waiting in vain for another men’s winner at Roland Garros, heartbreak is built into the tennis fan experience in France. One thing we know is, this loss won’t dim their love for the sport, their hopes for their countrymen, and their willingness to wear their hearts on their sleeves.