German tennis star Alexander Zverev has opened up on his mental health struggles, after his shock defeat to France’s unseeded Arthur Rinderknech at the 2025 Wimbledon on Tuesday.
Zverev was the highest-ranked star to get knocked out of the ongoing Grand Slam in an opening round riddled with upsets in a Wimbledon record this week.
Speaking to journalists after his 7-6 (7/3), 6-7 (8/10), 6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 6-4 loss in a four-hour 40-minute marathon on the Centre Court, the world number three said his middling performances were due to his suffering mental state.
“I feel very alone out there at times. I struggle. Mentally, I’ve been saying that I’ve struggled since after the Australian Open. Just don’t know. Trying to find ways to get out of this hole. I keep finding myself back in it. I feel generally speaking quite alone in life at the moment, which is a feeling that is not very nice.”
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Zverev, who has never made it past the fourth round at Wimbledon, said that he is open to the idea of therapy while further elaborating his current state, ‘lacking joy’.
“I’ve never felt this empty before. Just lacking joy, just lacking joy in everything that I do. It’s not necessarily about tennis. Just lacking joy outside of tennis, as well.
“Even when I’m winning, even when I’m winning like in Stuttgart or Halle, it’s not necessarily, like, a feeling that I used to get where I was happy, over the moon, I felt motivated to keep going. It’s just not there right now for me, which, again, is the first time in my life which I’m feeling it,” Zverev said.
Meanwhile, besides Zverev, 12 other men’s seeds have been knocked out at the first hurdle — a Wimbledon record since 32 seeds were introduced in 2001.
For the women’s singles draw, a total of nine seeds have already been eliminated.
