Many players would take a few days off to celebrate winning an ATP Masters 1000 title, but that was not the case for Alexander Zverev.
Zverev produced a stunning performance in the final of the Paris Masters. He demolished Ugo Humbert 6-2, 6-2, not giving the home crowd any opportunity to try and inspire the Frenchman.
It was Zverev's second Masters 1000 title of 2024, the other being the Italian Open in May. Only world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who won the Miami Open, Cincinnati Masters, and Shanghai Masters, has more 1000-level titles this year.
The German also overtook Carlos Alcaraz at No. 2 in the rankings by reaching the final of the Paris Masters. Securing the title added another 350 ranking points, giving him an even better chance of finishing the season as the No. 2 after the ATP Finals, which begin on November 10th.
However, Zverev's relentless work ethic was on show immediately after the final, when he hit the practice courts to try to improve his game further despite performing excellently against Humbert.
As seen in the video below, the Paris Masters X (formerly Twitter) account posted a brief clip of Zverev hitting groundstrokes after the final, although it is hard to know from that footage what specifically the 27-year-old was working on.
That is not the first time Zverev decided to practice after a match in Paris. He also trained for about an hour after beating Stefanos Tsitsipas in the quarterfinal.
After that practice session, Zverev talked about already having the Australian Open in January in his thoughts. He thinks there are areas where Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are superior that he needs to improve.
It is not unusual for players to do additional work on areas they struggled with after a match. For instance, Coco Gauff, who won her opening match of the WTA Finals, sometimes works on her troublesome second serve if she has a bad match with that shot.
However, players often let some time pass before heading back out on the same day. Zverev was practicing between the match ending and doing his post-match press conference.
In his press conference after the final, Zverev admitted he practiced after the match and revealed that his next practice will be on Wednesday. However, the Paris Masters champion did not give details about what he worked on when asked and talked more about his result in the French capital.
"Wednesday. But, yeah, for me, the result, it's great. I'm extremely satisfied. I'm happy about it. But as I said in the beginning of the week, for me I want tot improve some things for me to achieve my really big goals."
"I'm happy with the final. I'm happy with the tournament. Of course I'm sitting here with the trophy from a Masters 1000 event, but there are still some things I want to improve, and this is a process of a few months, and I'm improving for next year already hopefully."
Winning a Grand Slam is the one significant achievement missing from Zverev's career, so his prioritizing of the Australian Open is not overly surprising.
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