While his fellow 21-and-under players are battling it out at the Next Gen Finals in Milan, Alexander “Sascha” Zverev is preparing to make his debut alongside the big guns at the Nitto ATP Finals in London next week, where he shares a group with Roger Federer, Marin Cilic and Jack Sock.
Zverev, along with Sock, and Grigor Dimitrov are all making their first appearance at the top-eight season finale, while Goffin played one match at the O2 in London last year as an alternate but has qualified directly for the first time this season.
Goffin and Dimitrov share a group with world No.1 Rafael Nadal, who is seeking a maiden ATP Finals trophy, and Austrian Dominic Thiem, who will be making a second showing at the event.
The 20-year-old Zverev has had a tremendous 2017 that saw him rise to his current career-high ranking of No.3 in the world. He claimed two Masters 1000 titles in Rome and Montreal, defeating Novak Djokovic in the final of the former, and Federer to win the latter.
Zverev had qualified as the top seed for the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan but opted out in favour of the elite action set to take place in London.
The young German made a special appearance in Milan on Tuesday though, where he played an exhibition with Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Looking ahead to the ATP Finals, Zverev said: “I think playing in that event is kind of like winning a tournament itself already.
“It shows you’ve been playing at a top-10 level the whole year. Obviously that’s great for every player. I think it’s an honour for every player to play there. This is going to be my first time, hopefully not my last, but I’m going to try to prepare myself as best as I can and try to win many matches there.”
Zverev has won five titles this season, from six finals reached, and he is 6-5 win-loss against top-10 opposition in 2017.
When he triumphed in Rome last May, he became the first player born in the 1990s to win a Masters 1000 crown, and the youngest player to win a tournament at that level since Djokovic in 2007. The victory catapulted Zverev into the top-10 for the first time.
“I think Rome was an amazing tournament for me because it was also on clay,” reflected Zverev, who has won twice as many titles on hard courts than he has on the red dirt.
“On clay beating those kind of guys like Djokovic and other players is even tougher I think, for me it was a very tough match I think.
“So that means even more to me that it was on clay. But winning those Masters events was great, especially in one of them I beat Djokovic in the final and the other one I beat Federer in the final. So that’s something very special I think for everyone.”
There’s no doubt that 2017 has been a breakthrough season for Zverev, but the one glaring stat is his 6-4 win-loss at the Grand Slams this year, where he failed to make a debut quarter-final appearance at any of them.
He doesn’t have many regrets though over his performances at the majors this season.
“In Australia I lost to Nadal in five sets (in the third roud), in Wimbledon I lost to (Milos) Raonic in five sets (in the fourth round), so I didn’t feel like I played a lot of bad matches at the Grand Slams, I just lost to very good players,” he explains.
“The only bad match I felt like I played at a Grand Slam was at the US Open against (Borna) Coric (in the second round). That’s my personal opinion, I thought that as one of the worst matches I played all season but other than I think the opponents were maybe a little bit better than me on that day.”
So far in his young career, Zverev has stepped up on many big occasions and seems unfazed by the pressures that come with being amongst the sport’s elite. But the ATP Finals present a unique challenge for him, and he is well aware he’ll need to be firing from the get-go.
Asked if he was feeling any early butterflies ahead of London, Zverev said: ““I mean it’s Tuesday so it’s still a bit early. But it’s completely different.
“You play one of the best eight players in the world from the first match on. That’s something very special and you have to play your best tennis from the early rounds, which I think a lot of top players, maybe try to play themselves into tournaments, like I did in Washington and Montreal, actually I won both matches 7-6 in the third in the first rounds, and I got better the more I played.
“But this year I think it’s going to be an amazing experience for a lot of the first-timers this year and I’m looking forward to it.”
Nadal is in a race against time to recover from a knee problem that forced him to pull out of his quarter-final at the Paris Masters last week.
His doctor Angel Ruiz Cotorro told Cope radio station on Tuesday that they are doing everything they can to get the Spaniard ready for the Finals and that scans have shown that there was “nothing serious detected in the tendon” of his right knee.
Nadal has missed two of the last three ATP Finals through injury and has never won the event, while Federer is seeking a seventh trophy at the season finale.
The ATP Finals begin on Sunday with Federer’s group taking to the court at the O2, while Nadal’s group commence on Monday.
