Zverev vs Humbert: Paris Masters Final

forehands — boring excellence — strengths or weaknesses? — serve toss

Alexander Zverev defeated Ugo Humbert 6/2 6/2 in the final of the Rolex Paris Masters on Sunday to leapfrog Carlos Alcaraz in the computer rankings as the new world #2. Zverev now leads Humbert 2-1 in their H2H.

Alexander Zverev had won 25 matches in a row against left-handers coming into Sunday’s final. The German owns one of the best two-handed backhands on tour, and can leverage the wingspan of his 6’6’’ frame to counter even the best of lefty attacks. Still, it didn’t deter Humbert from leaning into his southpaw instincts early on:

You’ve hit it well when you get Sascha chipping the backhand return.

The Frenchman — not particularly known for his footspeed and defense — had shown glimpses of such talents in the dying games of his win over Alcaraz a few days earlier, and held the opening game here with a very handy forehand pass to kickstart the Parisian “Ugo!” chants on the first change of ends.

Unfortunately for Humbert, it would signal the high point of the match for him.

As electric as the crowd was — and wanted to be — Zverev has a talent for being boringly excellent. It’s hard not to be when you’re a 6’6’’, relatively slow-twitch, highly disciplined counterpuncher. Sure he has power (physics loves those levers), but the way he generates it makes for unremarkable viewing, akin to watching the boom of a tower crane arc slowly across the blue sky in a powerful show of engineering force from the comfort of your high-rise office building. His first service point was a good example of how he can subdue the tennis fan. First of all, he does not walk, he saunters. Upon reaching the baseline he bounces the ball twelve times, rocks back in a half-hearted Sampras pose, and then moves his long levers to efficiently grunt an unreturned wide serve at 200km/h to the courteous applause of inpatient Parisians awaiting more Ugo magic. It is excellent, and it is boring.

boring excellence.

But Zverev is a beast. I don’t know how many times he has retired, or called for the trainer with cramps, but it can’t be many. I’ve rarely seen him tank points. The man competes. You can tell that he hates to lose more than he loves to win, and he hates to miss more than he loves to hit winners. It was on full display on his second service point, hustling and defending his way to a Humbert unforced error on the 18th shot of the rally. To beat him you need to hit a lot of very good tennis shots, and today Ugo couldn’t muster them, or rather, he just ran out of them midway through rallies that showcased the lung-busting, absorbing greatness of Zverev.

On the German’s first break point he took Humbert’s best wide-serving material and drilled it back to the Frenchman’s laces. Then he went to work, staying crosscourt and soaking up the pressure until Humbert went for a down-the-line forehand — a shot that served him so well against Alcaraz — and missed it in the net.

Zverev anticipates the wide serve here and just nails it. I’m not sure anyone else on tour has that kind of shot in the bag. Humbert was looking for every inch of angle with his position here (close to a foot fault).

“Just puts a bit of a ‘quietener’ [not a word] on the crowd with that early break, doesn’t he?”

— TennisTV following the first break of serve for Zverev

Zverev killed the crowd early and quickly.

I thought Zverev’s backhand was excellent early on. He took Humbert’s best forehand punches and sent them back where they came from with great depth. To make matters worse, Zverev was hitting his forehand — his weaker side — with real intent.

“His forehand has been magnificent the first five games. As I say, any player preparing to player Zverev is thinking “okay, I’m going to try and target the forehand. His two-handed backhand is so good”, but look at that. His forehand quality is 9.6 out of 10 so far.”

—TennisTV

When Zverev has the line forehand working you are in big trouble.

As I said in my Roland Garros final recap earlier this year, when Zverev is hitting the forehand well it makes you wonder just how good he could be. Of course, it’s easy to hit good shots on unimportant points, and if there was ever a backhanded compliment one could pay to the Zverev forehand, it is that it is quite good on unimportant points.

An example of how Alcaraz (and Djokovic, Nadal, prime Federer, del Potro, Sampras, Agassi, etc.) use leverage in the racquet head to create speed. Zverev creates a lot of speed by pulling his elbow high and away and keeps the racquet head on the hitting side, but I’m yet to see a great forehand with this flexed wrist/high elbow setup.

The first set was wrapped up in 36 minutes with another Zverev ace. Look at the baseline points won:

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Things went from bad to worse for Humbert at the start of the second, broken off the back of another forehand down-the-line error, as Zverev went from winner to winner with his own forehands.

The main issue in this matchup was the fact that Humbert got very few attackable forehands. He usually generates them by attacking the righty’s backhand with that sliding serve, and even his general rally ball is aggressive enough to generate short balls, but Zverev absorbs so well from that side. The speed and depth didn’t bother him one bit. Even when Humbert drove his flat backhand hard and deep into Zverev’s forehand, the German stood firm, and I can’t remember him playing that well from the forehand wing. Ever.

At one point Humbert was so desperate to create short balls he inevitably did foot fault out wide.

oops

Such a brilliant performance from the Zverev forehand made me think back to my sports psychology thesis, where I interviewed a host of top-30 professional tennis coaches. Several mentioned the importance of focusing on a player’s strengths and making them as strong as possible, as that is how you win matches, plus you’d never have the time or off-season to improve a weakness drastically anyway. An 80/20 rule was mentioned by another in terms of time/energy devoted to strengths versus weaknesses. Much of this mindset is born out of the positive psychology movement and is studied as “strengths-based approaches” in coaching literature, where research suggests that people have higher self-esteem, better performances, and experience less stress when using and working on their strengths more.

The opposite is called a deficits-based coaching approach, and focuses on addressing weaknesses. It is interesting (to me at least) that when I peruse some notable improvers of recent times, it is often the development of their weaknesses that have helped them become better players:

• Sinner — always a hard hitter, but lacking the fitness, movement, and serve — improved his end-range movement and serving prowess in the last 18 months. A quote I found interesting that I tweeted at the time during the Australian Open.

• de Minaur — a paragon of “the legs feed the wolf” mantra — improved the teeth to his game this year which catapulted him to new heights. The serve and offensive game was better than it has ever been.

• Alcaraz has made numerous tweaks to his serve and more recently his backhand, in a never-ending hunt for improvements to his weaker areas.

  

• Vienna champion Jack Draper has muscled up his forehand — once a spinny surething — into something wholly more dangerous, with technical changes in his setup also.

  

I believe it is a similar story with Zverev, who over the course of the 2020s has made improvements to his serve toss that resulted in less double faults and a higher first-serve %

Courtesy of Matt Willis.

A lower toss has a host of technical benefits: (a) it is easier to replicate; (b) the ball is dropping slower through your contact zone (or not at all if you are as low and fast as Kyrgios and GMP; (c) it’s easier to disguise your intention; and (d) it promotes a faster swing.

While the forehand has improved, it’s hard to really know how good it is unless we are deep in an important slam match. Then we will know where confidence ends and competence starts.

On first appearances improving weaknesses seems the low-hanging fruit, but the problem is that motor patterns and old habits make that tree feel more like a Californian Redwood. There’s still a lot of work that goes into moving arms, wrists, and racquets a few inches here and there. Like steering a cruise ship with an oar. But if you can, the payoffs seem very rewarding.

But that is a piece for another day.

Today Zverev made this an underwhelming final because he played impeccable Zverev tennis, and Humbert couldn’t find a matchup advantage anywhere or generate enough momentum to rouse the animal spirits of the Parisians.

As a reward the German becomes the computer’s number two, although I would wager he is still the locker room three. However, with similar conditions ahead in Turin, and with Alcaraz bumped into Sinner’s group, Zverev has a good chance to add more achievements to an already impressive 2024.

That’s all for Paris. I’ll see you in Turin. HC