One of the most unfortunate compliments in all of sport is to be called the best to never win a championship. You hear this a lot in team sports. Like Charles Barkley or Allen Iverson in basketball, or Dan Marino or Jim Kelly in the NFL. For all of these, they were amazing athletes - perhaps even the best in their sport for a window of time - but just couldn’t quite get over the hump. And all of them were in at least one title game or series. In team sports, it’s perhaps a bit more palatable, because winning a championship is dependent on the group of athletes around you. Even the greatest QB in the world can’t make up for an awful roster.
It’s perhaps even tougher when this moniker sticks to you as an athlete in an individual sport, like say track or golf. Such was the case for Sacha Zverev, who until just recently was increasingly considered the greatest tennis player to never win a major tennis championship – the four anchor tournaments by which the sport’s historical greatness is judged, fairly or not. Zverev got that proverbial monkey off his back, so to speak, by winning the French Open against 10th seeded Favio Cobolli in five sets, a match that at times felt more uncertain than it should have been.
The 29-year-old Zverev has lived something of a binomial tennis life. On the one hand, a consistent top five player with a dominant serve and backhand. And on the other, living in the shadow of perennial champions, be it Nadal and Djokovic in his earlier years and now Sinner and Alcaraz, who seem poised to win every major until they don’t.
But, as fate would have it, this French Open presented a unique chance to break through. Alcaraz, the world’s best clay court athlete, was out with an injury. And the world’s number one and presumptive winner Jannik Sinner lost in the second round with what seemed like a near heat stroke.
All in all, six of the world’s top 10 were out before the second week, making Zverev the overwhelming favorite, minus the lingering doubt that he could in fact get across the finish line. He had lost his three previous visits to finals, including in the 2020 US Open when he held a two sets to love lead over Dominic Thiem – who to be clear, is not Jannik Sinner. So there was a thought that while Zverev was the best player to never win a major, that moniker might continue even given the favorable situation presented in Paris.
So, I won’t give a play by play of how Zverev won the title, and I also won’t do what some folks are doing, which is diminish his win because of who wasn’t playing or who he didn’t have to beat. In the end of the day, there were 128 athletes in a single elimination event over two weeks. However you get there, it’s one amazing accomplishment, and Zverev should get all the glory he deserves. Second, I’m not going to dig into his personal life, which is marked by controversy. That’s a different story for another storyteller. And to be honest, this isn’t really about Sasha Zverev, or any one particular athlete.
The issue here isn’t whether this one guy deserves to win a title. It’s really about the way in which we define a career, a calculus built upon a formula of expectation and opportunity. I personally believe one can be a legendary athlete without being a champion, even in an individual sport like tennis where we measure history based on hardware. I want to believe that even if someone doesn’t get to the mountaintop, it’s not a sign of failure, but rather a confluence of luck, conditions, and who happened to be on the other side of the net. That’s certainly the case for everyone who wanted to be heavyweight champion around the time of Mike Tyson. I’d hope it’s true for Sasha Zverev as well. But believing that means valuing process and performance with the same regard as result, which can be a tough sell when you’re whole life you’ve been told the reward is the trophy.
Fortunately for Sasha Zverev, he won’t have to perform those mental gymnastics any longer. And he certainly won’t have to endure one of the most backhanded compliments in all of sports.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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