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Alexander Zverev has made an honest admission about struggling with his game and the arduous ATP Tour schedule this year following his third-round exit from the 2025 Shanghai Masters earlier this week. The German expressed hopes of regrouping soon, with only two big tournaments left on the calendar.
Zverev, currently ranked World No. 3, has secured the third-most ATP singles wins this year so far at 48. That said, the 29-year-old has accumulated 21 losses in the same period, having failed to capitalize on a kind draw on many occasions. On Monday (October 6), the third seed succumbed to a 6-4, 3-6, 2-6 defeat to France's Arthur Rinderknech in the third round of this week's Shanghai Masters and now trails the World No. 34 0-2 in their head-to-head meetings.
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To add more salt to the wound, Alexander Zverev was the highest seed left in the top half of the draw after Carlos Alcaraz withdrew from the ATP Masters 1000 tournament at the last minute. Against that background, he was quick to concede to the media that the 2025 season hasn't been kind to either the "belief in his shots" or his physical conditioning.
"I simply have no self-confidence, no belief in my shots. My year has been terrible; I'm just playing terrible tennis all around. It's been a tough year physically," Alexander Zverev said (via Eurosport).
Furthermore, the German also claimed that this year's Australian Open was the last tournament where he had "played without pain".
"The last time I played a tournament without pain was the Australian Open. Let's see if I'll be fully healthy again this year. It's really a struggle," he added.
Zverev is next scheduled to play at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna later this month. He will then be defending his Paris Masters title, following which he will join the elite eight at the ATP Finals in November.
"Not a fan" - When Alexander Zverev expressed frustrations with jam-packed 2025 ATP Tour schedule
Alexander Zverev has competed at 22 tournaments this year. During an interaction with the Nothing Major podcast in August, the 29-year-old asserted that it was currently "impossible" to economize and play a light schedule on the ATP Tour, as the top pros are required to compete in a minimum number of mandatory tournaments.
"The thing is I would love to, but with how the ATP has done the tournaments nowadays, it's impossible to," Alexander Zverev replied when asked about whether he wanted to play less ATP events in a year. "Now the ATP has made four mandatory 500 events for you to play. This used to be three, now it's four. So, you kind of don't really get under 20 events except if you are pulling out of those big events. I'm not a fan of where this is going."
Although the World No. 3 reached the Australian Open final and took home his 24th career singles title in Munich earlier in April, he has since struggled to reach the title match of a big tournament.
