ATP Tour

Inside Zverev's time with Toni Nadal & the potential of a partnership

Shortly after Wimbledon, Alexander Zverev was sitting at an airport when he received an interesting message on his phone. The sender? Toni Nadal, the uncle and longtime coach of Rafael Nadal.

“He sent me a very long voice message and then I said, ‘Can we please talk?’ And then we talked on the phone for about an hour and a half,” Zverev told ATPTour.com. “It was such a nice conversation. It was about tennis, it was about life, it was about everything.”

After the conversation, Zverev quickly asked if he could visit ‘Uncle Toni’ to spend time with him and the Spaniard agreed.

“I went there, I saw him and it was an amazing 10 days,” Zverev recalled. “I really enjoyed it and I’m very thankful to him and to Rafa also for welcoming me the way I did. It was really nice.”

During his pre-tournament press conference at the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers, Zverev detailed his time in Spain and expressed his gratitude for the Nadal family’s help.

“The time in Mallorca was amazing,” Zverev told the assembled media. “I'm trying to convince him to do more weeks with me, and we'll see how it goes, but he's a very busy man. Also he has a lot of dates that he already committed to this year, so I'm not sure how much of him you'll see this year.”

Nadal is booked for various events and speaking engagements. Zverev added: “But we're talking about what a potential partnership could look like, for sure, and I can give you an update probably in a few weeks’ time when we know more. But I enjoyed my time there, that's for sure.”

The No. 3 player in the PIF ATP Rankings is known to return to court after matches to work on his game, so it is no surprise that he was excited to learn from someone with Nadal’s experience.

“I think at this stage for me it's about winning, and trying to maximise what I have, and trying to maximise what I can become,” Zverev said. “Again, I think my team, but also Toni, are exceptional in that, in maximising what a player has. Of course, he was with Rafa before — which, I'm never going to compare myself to Rafa — but if he can maximise what I have, and he can maximise the potential that I have, I'm sure that I can have a lot more success in my career.”

Zverev is two wins from reaching 500 tour-level victories for his career according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index (498-212) and he has won 24 ATP Tour titles, including two Nitto ATP Finals trophies.

But that will not prevent him from pushing for even more success. Zverev praised Uncle Toni as a coach both on and off the court.

“He has a personality that I think can give you a lot of confidence as well, because when he speaks and when Rafa speaks, you listen. Yeah, they definitely spent a lot of hours talking to me, and they gave me some great insight,” Zverev said. “Rafa gave me some great insight of what it actually is like to play against me, because he saw me as a player, he saw me now as a spectator as well. It was very helpful, and again, we spent hours and hours talking, sometimes until past midnight in some dinners and stuff like that. So it was great to be there.”

Zverev will try to put the lessons he has learned into effect in Toronto, where he is the top seed. The German will begin the ATP Masters 1000 event against Australian Adam Walton in the pair’s first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting.

“I'm excited to be here,” Zverev said. “I'm excited to play again, and I think the time off in the summer was extremely important for me.”