“I can dream again”: On Alexander Zverev’s Rome triumph and what awaits him in Paris

Sunday’s men’s final in Rome was a battle of the recently resurrected.

Alexander Zverev and Nicolas Jarry are two good clay-courters who were having strangely bad clay-court seasons coming into this tournament. Zverev was a four-time Masters 1000 champion on dirt, and a three-time semifinalist at Roland Garros; Jarry had won all three of his career titles on the surface. Which made it a surprise when neither man was a factor in Monte Carlo, Munich, Barcelona, or Madrid. Together, they went 4-6 at those tournaments.

But this spring has been a season of strangeness and sudden reversals of fortune on the ATP Tour. We came into the clay swing expecting Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, and Daniil Medvedev to spend six weeks jockeying for position in Paris. Instead, all of them gradually receded into the background. Alcaraz, Sinner, and Medvedev suffered injuries, while Djokovic had a bottle dropped on his head.

Which left room for Zverev and Jarry to make their own reversals, in a positive direction, in Rome. Jarry, a towering, hard-hitting Chilean, beat Stefanos Tsitsipas on his way to the final, while the fifth-ranked Zverev took out Taylor Fritz and survived Alejandro Tabilo. Along the way, he began to look something like the player who had reached the Rome final two times in the past.

Zverev looked that way again in his third title match at the Foro Italico on Sunday. His 6-4, 7-5 win over Jarry was both hard-fought and decisive. Zverev didn’t face a break point, won 80 percent of his first-serve points, made just five unforced errors over an hour and 41 minutes, compared to 17 from Jarry, and double-faulted just once.

The 6-foot-7 Jarry is an ultra-aggressive baseliner, but Zverev is the better mover and has a more varied repertoire of shots. His job was to keep the ball deep, force the big man to move, and take his chances to be aggressive when they came. Zverev did all of that—until he got to championship point. Three times he reached the brink of victory, and three times he tightened up and lost the point. Finally, on his fourth try, he swung through on a forehand and found the corner with it to clinch his first title of 2024, and his first Masters 1000 title since 2021.

“Today was a great performance,” Zverev said. “I think Nico has been somebody that has been playing extremely well. The way that he beat the opponents, what kind of opponents he beat as well shows that he’s been absolutely on fire. I had to neutralize that.”

“This one is special in its own way because it proves to me that I can win these kinds of tournaments again,” Zverev added. “I’m at the level where I want to be. Moving forward, I can dream again.”

Zverev regained his champion’s confidence over the last 10 days. Did he also gain a Grand Slam champion confidence? With this title, he has rocketed up to the top of the contenders list at Roland Garros. He has reached the semifinals there the last three years, and he has more momentum than anyone ranked above him at the moment.

“I’m somebody that I know when I don’t play well, I can lose to anyone, but when I play well, I know I can beat anyone,” he said. “That’s my mindset. That’s how I think about it. I know I have to focus on myself, to find my rhythm in Paris the way I did here. Then everything is on my own racquet.”

At the same time, Zverev thinks the guys ranked ahead of him will be ready come game time in Paris.

“Nole is going to be at his best. You’ll see. It’s just the way it is. Rafa is going to play a lot better than he did in Madrid and Rome. I’m certain about that. [Alcaraz and Sinner], they just depend on health. If they're healthy, they're two of the best players in the world, for sure.”

This one is special in its own way because it proves to me that I can win these kinds of tournaments again. Moving forward, I can dream again. —Alexander Zverev

Yet Zverev will have his own issue and possible distraction to deal with during Roland Garros. His trial for domestic physical abuse, in an incident involving ex-girlfriend Brenda Patea from 2020, is set to begin in Berlin on May 31. Zverev’s attendance in court isn’t mandatory, and he said this week that he won’t be there. But it seems certain that the proceedings in Berlin will weigh on his mind wherever he is—and perhaps especially so when he has a legitimate chance to win his first major title.

“Let me enjoy this one for a day or two,” Zverev told an on-court interviewer in Rome on Sunday, in what may or may not have been a moment of wishful thinking. “Then I’ll have my full focus on Paris.”