Alexander Zverev withdraws from tournaments in Seoul and Tokyo as his season may be over

Friday, 23 September 2022 at 18:40

Updated at Friday, 23 September 2022 at 17:14

byBalasz Virag

After suffering one of the worst injuries in his career, Alexander Zverev was set to make a come back during the Davis Cup, but that was delayed.

The 25-years-old German played probably the best Roland Garros of his career when he was fighting against Rafael Nadal in the semifinals, but after three hours and 7 minutes, he suffered from a horrible injury before a tie-break in the second set started. That forced Alexander Zverev to miss the whole grass-court part of the season and also some part of what came after the third Grand Slam of the season.

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Initially, it seemed that the German may be ready for this year's US Open when the recovery was going very well for him. Back then, he said: "I still haven't given up on the US Open, and, of course, I want to be part of the Davis Cup for myself. That's a goal."

However, a few weeks later, he was forced to withdraw also from the 2022 US Open and he set the Davis Cup in Hamburg as his new come back date. Everything seemed to be going well for Zverev then as he already practiced with the German team and also with the oldest tennis player in the world who played with the German ahead of the team event.

But then, Zverev announced that he won't be able to compete for Germany. Moreover, it seemed that this injury can cause the 2022 season to end early for him, when he said: "I have a bone edema issue which causes me quite a lot of pain. I don’t know if it happened yesterday or not but yesterday in practice with Oscar [Otte] it got to the point where I couldn’t run or walk anymore."

Now, the doubts continue to be raised as Alexander Zverev withdrew from the 2022 Korea Open in Seoul and 2022 Japan Open in Tokyo, where he was supposed to be the top-seeded player. If the German would really need to end his season early, he may finish outside of Top 10 of the ATP Rankings for the first time in six years and he will definitely use that to fuel his come back next year.