PARIS — At this French Open, opportunity does not just knock for Alexander Zverev. It’s banging down his door.
For the three-time Grand Slam finalist, often called the best male player to have never won a major, the 2026 Roland Garros draw has opened up beyond his wildest dreams. World No. 2 and two-time defending champion Carlos Alcaraz withdrew ahead of the tournament, with a right wrist injury. Then Jannik Sinner, last year’s finalist and the world No. 1, lost in the second round, and Novak Djokovic, a three-time champion, lost in the third.
This is uncharted territory for Zverev, 29. He entered his three previous major finals as the underdog, two of which ended in defeat to either Sinner (2025 Australian Open) or Alcaraz (this tournament two years ago). The third was the 2020 U.S. Open, when Zverev met Dominic Thiem.
Six years ago, Thiem was in the position Zverev is now. The Austrian had also lost his first three Grand Slam finals, all against Djokovic or Rafael Nadal, and was finally playing against someone he was widely expected to beat.
His performance in the final was an example of how Zverev should not approach the next few rounds: Both men delivered the tightest, nerviest displays of their careers. Zverev went up by two sets to love, but Thiem came back, before stumbling over the line in an agonizing fifth-set tiebreak, with both players looping the ball back to each other and gripped by tension. The match was played in an empty Arthur Ashe Stadium, because of Covid-19 regulations.
Zverev, who plays Spanish rising star Rafael Jódar in his quarterfinal Tuesday, is now in a position of experience over the rest of the field. Only one other man in the last eight (Italy’s Matteo Berrettini) has reached a major final; Zverev, the world No. 3, is one of two top-10 players remaining, alongside world No. 5 Félix Auger-Aliassime.
On paper, Zverev is the overwhelming favorite, which creates a fascinating dynamic for a player who has spent the past year trying to shed his natural inclination to be safe and steady when the biggest titles are on the line.
Having seen Alcaraz and Sinner take matches away from him with attacking, front-foot tennis, he vowed to play more aggressively. When Zverev first became a force on the ATP Tour, his combination of a huge first serve and the ability to play like a human backboard bamboozled even the Big Three. Zverev and Daniil Medvedev, one year his senior, asked Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic to adjust their games, blending the profiles of huge server and baseline grinder which had previously been mostly kept apart.
Zverev reached those three major finals, became world No. 2 and won Olympic gold (at the 2021 Tokyo Games) and seven ATP Masters 1000 titles playing his older way. But it wasn’t enough to get past Thiem; the Big Three adjusted and then Alcaraz and Sinner arrived, playing hyperaggressive tennis with such elite returning that they could both hit through Zverev and blunt his most powerful weapon.
So, Zverev too had adjusted. But the quandary now is that with Sinner, Alcaraz and Djokovic out of the way, his old Plan A may be enough to get him over the line — a “Ming vase” strategy in which he can trust that his opponents’ limitations will mean that he does not have to take matches from them, but rather let them give them to him.
Alexander Zverev lost to Carlos Alcaraz in the 2024 French Open final. (Dan Isitene / Getty Images)
Andre Agassi, who also lost his first three Slam finals before going on to win eight of them, said Monday that Zverev is a “little bit too passive” given his groundstroke gifts.
“His backhand is arguably the best backhand we’ve ever seen in the game,” Agassi said on TNT Sports, for whom he is working as a French Open analyst, “but he is willing to give too much ground on his forehand side too often.”
“If he can find out how to put down the forehand moving forward, he would take his game to a whole new level.”
Against Jesper de Jong in the fourth round Sunday, Zverev tried to stick with the more offensive approach. He laced forehands, often miscuing them in the early stages, and made frequent — and largely successful — forays to the net. He played with a reasonable amount of variety too, hitting a well-disguised drop shot to wrap up the first-set tiebreak.
It is easy to tell when Zverev is out of his comfort zone, because he celebrates more enthusiastically when something comes off — be that a drop shot, a serve-and-volley play or really committing to a plus-one (the shot after the serve) forehand. He ended up easing past De Jong in straight sets, after a tricky start.
Hailed as a future world No. 1 more than a decade ago, Zverev is well-adjusted to receiving questions about winning tennis’ ultimate prize. At this year’s French Open, as the draw has become more and more appealing, he hasn’t expanded too much about his prospects, but opened up a little on them after beating de Jong, the Dutch lucky loser.
“Look, I’m here, I’m feeling confident with my game,” he said in a news conference. “I thought I handled the situations well the first week, even when I was losing a set. Like the last match, I came back and played well. Today I was down a break early on. Came back and played well. I feel like I’m handling the situations quite well, and I will do everything possible to continue doing that.”
Doing so will require him to navigate the tricky tennis dynamics of being the favorite or frontrunner. Marta Kostyuk, the No. 15 seed who is 16-0 on clay in 2026 and into the quarterfinals in the women’s draw, started that run at the Rouen Open in France, on the lowest rung of the WTA Tour. Sandra Zaniewska, Kostyuk’s coach, told her to play it to experience the pressure of being a favorite, instead of an underdog. Kostyuk won the event, and has since gone from strength to strength.
On a micro level, Anna Kalinskaya and Anastasia Potapova offered an exhibition of how much easier it is to play freely when behind, than with something to lose, in their fourth-round match Monday. Russian-born Austrian Potapova was 4-1 up in the first set, but lost it 6-4. In the deciding set, Potapova broke Kalinskaya three times, only to lose her serve three times, two of which came when Potapova was serving for the match.
It wasn’t just her. Kalinskaya, the Russian No. 22 seed, also managed to go 4-1 up in that set, before it went to a tiebreak which Kalinskaya won.
Zverev will have that expectation of victory, in the macro sense and during matches when he leads, in every one he plays from here on in. It’s simultaneously the biggest opportunity he’ll ever have, and the most pressure he’ll ever face.
