Zverev on Djokovic: 'I think at the moment he's a bit underrated'

Novak Djokovic is a 24-time major champion and less than two weeks ago he won the 100th tour-level title of his career. But as the sixth seed at Roland Garros, the Serbian did not arrive in Paris as the leading favourite.

The three-time champion at the clay-court major made a statement in the quarter-finals Thursday, reminding everyone of his potential at the event with a four-set win against Alexander Zverev.

“I think at the moment he's a bit underrated, to be honest,” Zverev said. “Funny that you say that, but I think like a lot of people count him out already, but this year he's had wins over Carlos at the Australian Open, he has had a win over me at the French Open. Forget the age. I think for any player, those are pretty good results.”

Winning seven best-of-five-set matches at a Grand Slam tournament is a big physical challenge, and Djokovic still has two tough matches to go to lift the Coupe des Mousquetaires. However, the 38-year-old has proven his game is still very much there. 

“He’s still beating the best of the best,” Zverev said. “So I think everybody needs to respect that.”

While Djokovic arrived in Paris fresh off claiming the title in Geneva, he had lost three consecutive matches before that. He is now 21-7 this season according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index.

“He's won 24 of these things. I think, yes, I expected him to be able to play like this. I have not seen him play like this this year yet,” Zverev said. “I think it was very, very high level from him. It was at some point difficult for me.

“I mean, in the first set when the sun was not completely down, there was still some heat on the court. I could still, I felt like, hit some winners and do some damage with my serve. Then later on when it got really, really cold, I couldn't really do much.”

The two-time Nitto ATP Finals champion explained that as the match wore on, Djokovic found solutions to the various things he was doing during points and “felt like I didn't know how to win a point from the baseline against him”.

Now Djokovic is moving on to face the No. 1 player in the PIF ATP Rankings, Jannik Sinner, and Zverev is departing the tournament trailing the Serbian 5-9 in their Lexus ATP Head2Head series.