Alexander Zverev will finish 2025 as the world No 3, but a remarkable statistic confirms the big-serving German is further away from the top of the game than ever before.
Zverev has suffered a frustrating year, with his appearance in the Australian Open final last January not the prelude to a consistent year for the 28-year-old.
Speaking exclusively to Tennis365 prior to Wimbledon, Zverev admitted he took time to recover from the heavy beating he was handed by Jannik Sinner in that Australian Open final, with his comments summing up where he went wrong after that.
“It did take me a while to get over it because I really went into the match and I thought, I can win this, I’m going to win,” Zverev told Tennis365.
“Then very quickly, I felt like, well, he was outplaying me on every single aspect. So I felt a bit lost out there at times.
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“Jannik was above everyone else the entire tournament and there was nothing else to say, but after that, I made some mistakes.
“I think I overplayed. I didn’t give myself, my body and my mind time to accept what happened. I just carried on playing and kind of had a little bit of a burnout in the middle of the season.
“It was too much. Some stupid decisions from my end and I paid the price for them, but that is in the past now.”
Zverev may have been trying to convince himself that he was back on track heading into Wimbledon, but he lost in the first round at the All England Club and he has struggled to find consistent form since.
He ends 2025 with 5,160 ranking points after going out of the ATP Finals at the group stages and even though he is officially the third best player in the world according to the rankings, the brutal reality is he is going backwards in his effort to challenge the game’s best players.
Zverev is almost 6,000 ranking points behind world No 2 Sinner and even more behind Alcaraz, who has wrapped up the year-end world No 1 ranking.
That means the player ranked at No 1000 in the ATP Rankings is closer to Zverev than the German star is to the top two players in the men’s game.
“For me, an incredibly unsatisfying season,” said Zverev after he was knocked out of the ATP Finals. “The tennis season is long, you have a lot of up and downs. For me there were not many ups. I think for me the Australian Open final, Munich as you mentioned. Everything else, I’m very unsatisfied.”
The gap highlights the dominance Alcaraz and Sinner have over their rivals, with former British No 1 Tim Henman suggesting Zverev needs to spend the weeks ahead of the 2026 season to find a way to change the direction of his career.
“You feel for Zverev. I think he’s had 11 break point chances in his last two matches and he hasn’t broken serve,” Henman told Sky Sports Tennis, after the channel’s lead commentator Jonathan Overend suggested the German’s performance was ‘very odd’.
“He was creating some opportunities, but just couldn’t find a way through and it’s amazing to think 12 months ago when we were watching Zverev and I was the one who said I thought he could win a Grand Slam.
“Then he got to the final at the Australian Open and now I see a performance like that and he looks lost. I don’t see a plan out there. His serving is phenomenal and it is keeping him in these matches, but from the back of the court, his forehand is looking vulnerable, he’s very reactive, he retreats.
“He is missing by a large margin and for someone who is a very, very good player, I just look at his game and I’m surprised that he’s playing a match like this. He has the experience, he has been there for a long time and I feel he needs to go away and reinvent himself.
“He’s got to really look at his game, break down his game and use his weapons more effectively. His serve is very good, but he has to work out how to make it work.
“He’s sitting back hoping his opponents will make mistakes and at this level, you won’t get away with that. He’s a very, very good player. He’s No 3 in the world, but I don’t feel like his game is trending in the right direction.”
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