"He went too far" - Mouratoglou on Zverev incident

Alexander Zverev made a mistake with his Acapulco outburst and it will be bad for his image in the short term, but he will learn from his mistake, according to Serena Williams’ coach Patrick Mouratoglou.

German Zverev hit the headlines for the wrong reasons at the end of February as he was expelled from the Mexican Open after he verbally abused a chair umpire and also hit the official’s chair with his racket. He was fined and lost his ranking points for the event while the ATP later added an additional fine and an eight-week ban with both suspended for a year.

Mouratoglou feels Zverev overstepped the boundaries, but he is also unimpressed with those who jump on the bandwagon and “pulls players down” when they made a mistake. He said:

“When I saw the images of Sascha in Acapulco shouting and hitting the chair umpire’s chair I thought ‘oof, he’s in trouble’. I realise that he went too far. It’s one thing to lose your temper, but you still need to have boundaries and he went too far. In the tennis world where everybody is supposed to be perfect all the time, I think it is bad for his image on the short term. On the long term people forget.”

He further said:

“It is the responsibility of the ATP to take the sanctions that they feel are necessary. I don’t like when someone makes a mistake and everybody jumps on that person and pulls him down. I think it was a bit too much, what people said. I know we are in a sport where people think the athlete should be showing perfection all the time, everything that is not in line with that is shocking to them. I am not surprised that people expect heavy sanctions because we are in the tennis. In soccer if there are these types of sanctions 90% of the players won’t play soccer anymore."