Earlier this week at the Paris Masters, Alexander Zverev hit out at his critics after facing questions about his status as the world’s highest-ranked player.
The German 29-year-old earned the top spot after a stellar season in which he won the French Open and US Open, and reached the Wimbledon final. He also reached the final of the Madrid Masters in May. Zverev was the best player to capitalise on the injury troubles of his rivals Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, who both missed chunks of the season.
Zverev’s first match as world No.1 didn’t go his way in Paris as he fell 7-6(5), 6-2 to Lorenzo Musetti. He is the fifth player on the ATP Tour to lose their first competitive match played after reaching No.1. The others to do so are John McEnroe (1980), Thomas Muster (1996), Lleyton Hewitt (2001) and Alcaraz (2022).
“I don’t think anybody had to explain themselves as much as I had to do in the last couple of days, which for me, is annoying, to be honest,” Zverev said after exiting Paris.
An issue for Zverev is that, despite a successful season, he has failed to shine against top-10 opponents and heads into the ATP finals with a 3-9 record. However, he is 62-8 against players ranked below 11th when he played them.
“I was a bit annoyed, to be honest, because achieving the world number one status is something that every player dreams of,” he continued.
“But then I feel like I’m the only world number in tennis history that has to explain why it’s OK for me to be world number one, which I find quite difficult, because I think I deserve to be where I am.”
Zverev may feel he is being criticised harshly, but historically many other players have faced similar criticism. In recent years, it might be easy to forget this given the achievements of the Big Three in men’s tennis.
Sweden’s Muster faced criticism that he wasn’t an all-round player and specialised purely on clay when he reached the top spot in 1996. This wasn’t just from the media, but from other high-profile players on the Tour.
“I feel that Thomas is the best player in the world on clay and as far as him being the best player on anything but clay, I don’t quite swallow that quite as well,” said Andre Agassi.
The season before reaching the top spot, Muster won 12 titles in 1995 and appeared in 14 finals, with 11 of those titles on clay.
Marcelo Rios faced questions about whether he was the best player in the world when ranked No.1 because he hadn’t won a Grand Slam. However, he did reach the Australian Open final a couple of months earlier.
“He’ll have to win a Slam this year to be number one in the players’ eyes,” Agassi once said. “And to be number one in his own eyes, he’ll have to win a Slam.”
Rios brushed off the remarks by saying, ‘The tour is not just for Grand Slams. There are 30 tournaments, not just four.’
Yevgeny Kafelnikov’s rise to No.1 was, without a doubt, under scrutiny, considering the Russian lost six consecutive first round matches en route to doing so. Mark Miles, then ATP chief executive officer, spoke to Kafelnikov about how the media perceived his rise.
“Let me give you my perspective on what has happened the last couple of weeks: You’ve become No. 1 in the world. You deserve it. Nobody had a better record,” he said.
“By chance, the last four weeks, you lost the first round. So, guess what, Yevgeny? The media and the public is figuratively scratching their heads, saying: How is it possible that a guy who is No. 1 in the world goes 0-4 four weeks in a row?’
Stefan Edberg was the year-end No. 1 in 1990 but wasn’t named the ITF’s World Tennis Champion (player of the year) because he wasn’t as consistent as winner Ivan Lendl that season. Edberg had suffered two first round losses at Grand Slams.
Zverev is just the latest in a series of players to face scrutiny as world No. 1, and this doesn’t even extend to numerous examples on the WTA Tour – Caroline Wozniacki, Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic all became No.1 without winning a major first and were all scrutinised. One example was in 2012 when Martina Navratilova said ‘Clearly nobody feels that Wozniacki is a true number one‘ and she owed her position to a flawed ranking system.
Zverev deserves to be No. 1 because he has won the most points over a certain period. However, he should expect criticism, as so many others in the past have.
