Alexander Zverev has had the most successful 2026 of any player on the ATP Tour. He entered this year with no Grand Slam wins and will leave with two major titles. That includes the US Open, where he managed to annoy many tennis fans watching with his incessant bouncing of the ball before serving.
Should chair umpires have given him many more time violation warnings? Likely, but there is little doubt that many found his style incredibly boring. He slows the match down with all that bouncing, and it has to be intentional. Maybe annoying is part of his approach to force his opponents to think about other things than the next point.
Tallon Griekspoor, the No. 55-ranked player, certainly wasn't a fan of Zverev's play. Going so far as to call Zverev not "exceptional."
Tallon Griekspoor speaks the truth about Alexander Zverev's incessant bouncing of the ball
The Dutch player said on the Cor Podcast ahead of an upcoming Davis Cup tie, "I found the match rather mediocre...Zverev wasn't exceptional, but he served really well...There were other sports going on, and I simply have a hard time watching Zverev. Especially in this tournament, where he bounced the ball 400 times before every serve. It was really extreme, but it obviously helped him."
To be clear, Griekspoor wasn't saying he thought Zverev was undeserving of winning the entire tournament or not a great player, but he did give voice to what many fans and other players likely think. Tennis isn't going to gain fans when people tune in to give the sport a try and see one of the higher-ranked players bouncing the ball thousands of times in a match.
That might help the German win matches, and maybe that is all he cares about, but it isn't good for tennis. It's boring. Baseball changed to having a pitch clock because some pitchers took forever to throw the ball, and tennis has the same countdown in theory. The difference is that baseball actually enforces it when the clock hits zero, and tennis doesn't.
It also takes a collective effort from chair umpires to have Alexander Zverev change what he does before he serves. An umpire being strict with the serve clock is great, but then in the next match, the next chair umpire will need to be just as strict.
Otherwise, Zverev is going to keep bouncing, bouncing, bouncing the ball until someone makes him stop. That forced stoppage could come from a different place than a chair umpire, though.
The German has taken advantage of absences from Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner this year. Alcaraz missed the French Open that Zverev won, and Sinner missed the US Open, where Zverev took the title. When both are healthy again in 2027, Zverev won't be in as many finals because, bounce or no bounce, Sinner and/or Alcaraz would have already knocked him out of a given tournament.
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