Alexander Zverev's alleged comments about his former coach, Ivan Lendl, recently went viral, but the German player denied making those comments.
Like many tennis players, the ATP World No. 2 is currently enjoying the off-season. That means he gets to rest a bit and recharge batteries before hitting the tennis courts again and starting the pre-season training.
Zverev will begin his 2025 season already on December 29th, as he's set to compete at the United Cup, which starts two days prior to that. Representing Germany, he will take on Brazil's Thiago Monteiro on December 29th and China's Zhizhen Zheng on December 30th unless some of these players withdraw.
One thing that tennis players also get to enjoy during the off-season is avoiding any unwanted questions from the press. Zverev knows this well, as he faced plenty of questions about his domestic assault case this year.
But as he found out this year, avoiding interviews doesn't really mean that his name won't appear in the headlines. Recently, the German publication Tennis Magazin published an interview with Zverev.
In the interview, the 27-year-old player should have talked about his coaching relationship with Ivan Lendl, as well as the possibility of hiring a coach in 2025.
Zverev started working with Lendl in August 2018, but the two split already in July 2019. In July 2019, Zverev talked to the German publication Die Welt, explaining his problems with coach Lendl, who seemed to be more interested in his golf than the German's tennis.
"In Hamburg, only my father is there as a trainer. Ivan got a puppy two months ago, which he is now teaching how to go to the toilet. That's really his main focus at the moment: golf and the little dog."
"I told him openly that he should focus more on tennis. Sometimes we stand on the tennis court for two hours, and for half an hour of that he stands with his back to me and talks about how he played golf that morning."
However, when another German publication, Tennis Magazin, now published an excerpt of their alleged interview with Zverev, similar quotes appeared in it, suggesting that the two-time Grand Slam finalist spoke about his former coach again.
These quotes were seemingly misinterpreted, and that's why Zverev came out to correct the narrative. In a story on his Instagram account, the World No. 2 player explained that he hasn't made any comments about Lendl in more than five years, which would correspond to the date of his interview in 2019.
"So, apparently I gave an interview about my coaching relationship with Ivan Lendl recently, which is not true. In fact, I have not spoken to anyone from the press since my foundation event in Tannenhof one day after Turin, and I have not made any comments about my coaching relationship with Ivan Lendl in more than five years."
"I understand that everybody is very bored right now because it is the off-season and not much is happening except a lot of hard work, but this shows once again that some stories have to be completely made up by very bad journalism to keep readers interested in made up drama. See you all soon in Australia.
Although Zverev cleared the air regarding the comments made about Lendl, and also Tennis Magazin already deleted that part from their article, one question still remains.
The reigning Paris Masters champion stated that he has not talked to anyone from the press in almost a month. According to his words, his last interview happened one day after the ATP Finals in Turin when he participated at the event of his foundation.
However, Tennis Magazin posted the title page of their upcoming print edition, claiming that they have conducted an exclusive interview with Zverev, which could contradict his statement unless the interview was made more than a month ago.