“I couldn’t move very well. You just have to do it against him, of course my game gets more hectic then,” said the tennis Olympic champion on Friday after the unexpectedly clear 3: 6, 4: 6, 0: 6 against the Norwegian Casper Ruud. At the end of the last training session before the big game on Friday evening, he suffered the injury. “I don’t want to take anything away from him, but to be honest I had problems,” said Zverev about the injury.

Zverev originally wanted to start at the lawn tournament in Stuttgart next week. This should now be settled. “Stuttgart was planned, but my body is also important to me,” said the 26-year-old when asked if this was still the case. First, he asked his manager about this topic in Russian. “I have no idea,” Zverev replied afterwards. “You can now imagine whether I play Stuttgart or not.”