Alexander Zverev has won two Grand Slams. Why do tennis fans still dislike him?

Alexander Zverev now has two Grand Slam trophies to his name in a single calendar year, having beaten Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6(2), 5-7, 6-2 in Sunday's US Open final. Add the French Open crown from earlier in 2026 and a runner-up finish at Wimbledon, and you have a season that, on pure numbers, ranks among the finest in the sport this decade. He finished his major campaigns 25-2, a win tally matched by only a handful of men in the Open Era. None of that will make him popular. It might not even make him liked.

That paradox sat in plain view through the fortnight in New York. During the final itself, Hall of Fame broadcaster Mary Carillo used the World Feed commentary, the one piped into the earpieces of spectators inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, to bring up the domestic abuse allegations that have trailed Zverev since 2020. It is an unusual thing to do mid-final, and it split opinion instantly. Tennis presenter Marcus Buckland suggested people ought to let the matter rest, since it had already been legally settled, and was promptly savaged online for it.

Zverev himself, asked afterwards about playing in a hostile arena, offered a line that told its own story: "It was an incredible atmosphere to play in, even though the crowd was against me. You guys brought the energy and noise." Screengrab from X A champion, by his own admission, playing to a crowd that wants him to lose. That is not a common sensation in sport, and it is worth asking why it has attached itself so firmly to Zverev rather than fading with time, the way most scandals eventually do.

Here is what the allegations actually are.

In 2020, Olya Sharypova, a former partner and junior player herself, said Zverev had subjected her to repeated physical and psychological abuse, including an incident in a New York hotel room before the 2019 US Open where she said he tried to smother her with a pillow. She never filed criminal charges. The ATP, after a delay that drew criticism in its own right, opened a formal investigation only in late 2021 and eventually found insufficient evidence to substantiate the claims. Then, in 2023, Brenda Patea, the mother of Zverev's daughter, brought her own domestic abuse case through the German courts. It moved towards trial before the two sides settled out of court in June 2024, Zverev paying a fine of 200,000 euros to the state rather than to Patea, with no formal admission of wrongdoing attached.

Two separate women, years apart, telling broadly similar stories, and neither case landing on a conviction.'AS MANY MAJORS AS ABUSE ACCUSATIONS'

That is precisely the gap in which public opinion has set up camp.

To Zverev's defenders, an ATP finding of insufficient evidence and a civil settlement without admission of guilt amount to exactly what the presumption of innocence is supposed to protect, and relitigating it at every trophy presentation is simply unfair. To his critics, insufficient evidence is not the same as innocence, a settlement is not an acquittal, and the very fact that two accusations exist independently of each other is itself the story that keeps not going away.

On the morning after the final, one X post that did the rounds described Zverev as a man who has "as many domestic abuse allegations as you have slams" and suggested that will always be his legacy.

It is a brutal line, and an unfair one in the strict legal sense given neither case produced a conviction, but its circulation says something about how little goodwill remains in the bank for him to draw on.

That was John McEnroe's parting shot as ESPN's broadcast coasted towards its sign-off, the trophy already lifted and the confetti already settled, and it had nothing to do with Carillo's remarks.This is how the commentary feed ended after the Zverev and Shelton US Open trophy ceremony."Get healthy Carlos and Jannik.""Please"pic.twitter.com/sUbWxJXQAa— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) September 13, 2026

Unprompted, with the timing of a man who cannot resist getting the last word in, he named two players who were not even in the building, as though Zverev's own trophy presentation were merely the undercard for a fight still to come.ZVEREV HASN'T HELPED HIS CAUSE

Zverev has not helped his own cause much. His standard response, across five years of being asked, has been some version of denial followed by an insistence that the subject is closed, delivered with the air of a man irritated at having to repeat himself. When Ben Rothenberg, the journalist who first reported Sharypova's allegations in detail, published texts and photographs supporting her account, Zverev sued him for libel rather than engaging with the substance. None of that is proof of anything in itself, but it has shaped the public mood, because evasiveness reads differently to an audience than a full-throated, detailed rebuttal would have.

Then there is the on-court Zverev, which has offered its own supporting evidence to the sceptics, if not to the specific allegations. In February 2022, having lost a doubles match in Acapulco, he walked to the umpire's chair and struck it repeatedly with his racket, coming close enough to official Alessandro Germani that the umpire pulled his feet back in alarm.

Andy Murray called it "dangerous and reckless." The ATP fined him, forfeited his prize money and ranking points from the event, and handed him a suspended eight-week ban with a year's probation. Zverev apologised, as he tends to, and moved on, as he tends to. It is a different order of offence to what Sharypova and Patea alleged, but it lives in the same file in the public imagination: a picture of a man whose temper, when it goes, goes further than most.STILL THE THIRD BEST Reuters Photo

That competitive grievance has substance to it. Zverev remains, by most honest reckonings, the third-best player at the moment, some distance behind Alcaraz and Sinner. Novak Djokovic, at 39, has not won a major since the 2023 US Open and suffered the earliest exit of his career this fortnight, beaten in five sets by Mariano Navone in the first round, a result that has revived questions about how much longer he intends to play on.

Zverev has taken full advantage of that vacuum, and there is no shame in doing so, tennis has always rewarded those who turn up healthy. But it does mean this year's haul carries the faint asterisk of circumstance, and it feeds a broader hesitation among brands too. Zverev has the build, the backhand and the passport of one of tennis's traditional powers to be sold as easily as Alcaraz or Sinner. Yet sponsors have kept a visible distance, wary of attaching themselves to a name that still triggers a Mary Carillo aside mid-final. Two Grand Slams in a season have not been enough to change that calculation, and it is not obvious what would be.

None of this will cost him more Grand Slams. He is 29, playing the best tennis of his career, and the game rewards backhands and second serves rather than public approval. But sport has always sold itself on more than results. It sells narrative, and it sells the fantasy of the deserving champion, and Zverev has made himself an awkward fit for that story no matter how many trophies accumulate. The ATP has cleared him to compete.

Zverev cannot control which side tennis fans choose. What he can control is the tennis. In 2026, that has been good enough to win Roland Garros and the US Open.

The trophies will stay in his cabinet. The debate around him will stay too.- EndsPublished By: Akshay RameshPublished On: Sep 14, 2026 18:32 IST