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If he wins his semi-final match at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York on Friday, Novak Djokovic will be one step closer to winning a Grand Slam at this year’s US Open. But the stakes are even higher for Djokovic’s contender Alexander “Sacha” Zverev: if he wins on Friday, it will bolster the 24-year-old tennis star’s growing reputation as an apparent heir to the singular stardom enjoyed by legends like Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
Zverev’s ascendant – he won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics last month – has renewed consideration of the domestic violence charges brought by his ex-girlfriend. It also raises new questions as to whether the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) has messed up its handling of these allegations, two of which are said to have taken place at ATP tournament venues. Now at least one of Zverev’s colleagues on the tour criticizes the mismanagement of events by the tennis organization and raises the question of whether his failure to take them seriously harms the sport as a whole.
“I am embarrassed and disappointed with the response of ATP and other governing bodies to this situation,” said Canadian star Milos Raonic, former top 3 player in the world. Rolling stone.
Zverev’s ex-girlfriend Olga Sharypova, who played in matches on the International Tennis Federation’s junior circuit as a teenager, first accused him of abuse in an October 2020 interview with a russian website Championship. She then detailed her allegations against Zverev to reporter Ben Rothenberg in a pair of articles published by Racket and Slate.
During her 13-month relationship with Zverev, Sharypova said she suffered both emotional abuse and multiple instances of physical abuse. She claimed Zverev hit her head against a wall and – while in New York for the US Open in 2019 – choked her with a pillow. In other incidents, Sharypova says Zverev punched her in the face, strangled and shoved her, leaving her with bruises on her face and arm. The abuse escalated so much, Sharypova said, that she was eventually made to self-harm by injecting herself with insulin – an act that she knew could fatally lower her blood sugar. (“I just wanted to leave somehow,” Sharypova said at the time, “because I can’t take it anymore.”)
In a report posted on twitter last month, the tennis star “categorically and unequivocally” denied abusing Sharypova, adding that he “fully supports[s] the creation of an ATP policy on domestic violence. (Representatives from the crisis PR firm representing Zverev and ATP did not respond to requests for comment.)
Sharypova did not file a complaint against Zverev and does not intend to bring any civil action. When asked about allegations against Zverev in the past, the ATP said it would wait for judicial inquiries to take their course. Once “due process is applied, we then look at the outcome and decide on the appropriate course of action,” ATP said in A declaration on slate.
But among Tour players, uncomfortable questions have circulated about ATP’s responsibility to investigate the serious charges against one of its most talented young players. “Should ATP have done something and got involved to protect the sport? Yes ”, says Raonic Rolling stone. “I felt like they were a little quiet about it all, and just waiting for it to pass.”
But even in the absence of a civil or criminal case, there seems to be more that ATP could do. The rules of the tour state that “players must not at any time physically abuse an official, an opponent, a spectator or any other person within the confines of the tournament site”; two of the alleged incidents of abuse that Sharypova has spoken of publicly are said to have taken place in hotels that are part of an official tournament site.
There is precedent for ATP to investigate such incidents – and potentially punish Zverev if the allegations were founded. In 2013, ATP suspended John Tomic, the father and coach of Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic, after head butting his son’s partner outside a tournament hotel.
“It’s in our rulebook,” says Raonic. “There have been other events that have taken place in tournament hotels where the ATP has responded by looking into this, and at that time they felt it was necessary to respond with some level of punishment.”
For his part, Raonic says that at the very least, there should be more public recognition of the accusations against Zverev in the US Open media coverage. “At least that should be recognized,” he says of Zverev, who is currently ranked fourth in the world. “I don’t know if it was.”
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