With breakthrough title, young Alexander Zverev continues to learn how to be a champion

Stan Wawrinka stood, frozen and flat-footed, in the middle of the court as the ball went past him for a winner. He had been expecting it to come to his backhand side. When it went to his forehand instead, there was nothing the newly-crowned U.S. Open champion could do but put his head down and clap his palm against his strings in a gesture of appreciation at his opponent’s surprisingly good shot.

That opponent, Alexander Zverev, hadn’t smacked the ball especially hard, or placed it perfectly in the corner. All the 19-year-old German had done was send a solid backhand up the line. But Wawrinka understood that it wasn’t where Zverev had hit the ball, but when. This was the tail end of a tense third set in Sunday’s St. Petersburg final, and Wawrinka, the world No. 3, had been pushing hard to make inroads on Zverev’s serve. It was exactly the moment when the Swiss veteran might have expected a teenager to crack under the pressure of trying to win his first ATP title. Wawrinka, tennis’ new king of Sundays, had won 11 straight finals and had been up 3-0 in the third set of this one. Why would he believe this kid would be the one to come back and break that streak?

But Zverev didn’t crack under the pressure. Instead, he kept his racquet steady and found just the right balance of margin and aggression with his backhand. All Wawrinka could do was applaud the kid’s nerve. With that potentially anxious moment past him, Zverev would swing more freely in breaking Wawrinka and holding for a 6-2, 3-6, 7-5 win. It was the first of what is sure to be many tournament victories in the future, and Stan wasn’t the only one applauding it. The men’s tour has been desperate for new blood, and Zverev is the first teenager to win an ATP title since Marin Cilic all the way back in 2008.

“This victory is something special,” said Zverev, who had lost championship matches in Nice and Halle earlier this year. “I played all the finals well. I lost to Dominic Thiem on clay [in Nice], and I could have won against Florian Mayer on the grass [in Halle] ... Now I’m very happy with the win, especially over such a great player like Stan.”

As he implied, Zverev has learned a lot—about his game, about what he’s capable of, about how to win—in 2016. He began the season ranked 83rd, and his 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 defeat to Andy Murray in the first round at the Australian Open hardly boded well for the immediate future.

“This guy has a lot to learn,” I wrote at the time.

Nine months later, Zverev has learned it. He’s ranked 24th, has a 38-21 record and has beaten three Top 10 opponents, including Roger Federer.

There were moments in the spring when you could see Zverev discovering new possibilities in his game from one week to the next. As of last year he was still growing, and he seemed content to rally and use his excellent two-handed backhand as his primary weapon. Now that he’s 6’6”, his serve has become a bomb, and he can club winners with his forehand from behind the baseline. The one trait that Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic all share is a blend of power and control on the forehand side, and Zverev has it, too.

Still, we knew he had the game; coming into this season, it was Zverev’s temperament that seemed problematic. Like his generational peer Nick Kyrgios, Zverev was combustible and prone to self-sabotaging meltdowns—in 2016, I wrote that he “was Borg on the outside, McEnroe on the inside.” Where Kyrgios continues to struggle with his attitude, though, Zverev has improved his. In his win over Wawrinka, he didn’t lose his cool, even when he was down 0-3 in the third. But neither did he over-celebrate afterward. We’ll see what happens in the future, but right now, at 19, Zverev looks, acts and plays with the respect and self-respect of a seasoned pro.

In March, Nadal recognized Zverev’s potential, calling him a “possible future No. 1” who “has all the shots” and “everything to become a big star.” The only time I could remember Rafa being so decisively upbeat about a younger player was when, after he first faced a teenaged Kei Nishikori at Queen’s Club, he said Kei would be “Top 5 for sure.”

Rafa obviously knows what he’s talking about, but Zverev didn’t seem quite ready to believe him when they played in Indian Wells. In one of the year’s best contests, Zverev reached match point only to bunt the easiest of volleys into the net. But like everything else this year, he learned from the experience. In June, Zverev closed out Federer in Halle, and against Wawrinka on Sunday, he held serve convincingly at 6-5 in the third. He knows how to beat the game’s best players, and now he knows how to win a tournament.

Just as important, though, Zverev also knows how hard the climb will be from here. After all, Cilic, the last ATP teen champ, has had a nice career, but he never went on to dominate the sport. Zverev, who must have bigger things in mind than becoming the next Marin Cilic, knows that nothing is guaranteed.

“Of course, it’s nice to have attention and stuff like that,” Zverev said this summer.

But, he added, “there’s been a million future No. 1s that never got to No. 1.”

He has more to learn, but the kid obviously knows a lot already.