Zverev wins US Open, dedicates emotional victory to mother

Alexander Zverev spent the longest passage of his US Open victory speech on Sunday night thanking the one person in his family who was not watching. Beating Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-2 gave the German a second Grand Slam title in three months, and he used the trophy ceremony to tell a story he has rarely told on a stadium court.

“I want to thank actually one more person who’s never actually watching my matches but is the most important person in my tennis life and in my life in general,” he said, without naming his mother.

“When your four-year-old son gets diagnosed with diabetes and doctors in the office tell you that life and sports will be very, very limited for that child, it takes a very, very strong mother to walk out of those offices and to say ‘my son will be whatever he wants to be’,” he said, breaking off twice before he could finish the sentence.

Zverev has had type 1 diabetes since the age of four. Alexander Zverev injected insulin twice on his way to beating Ben Shelton.

“If he wants to be a tennis player, he’ll be a tennis player. If he wants to do something else, he’ll do something else. But this illness will not define us, and I’m happy that we worked through it and we’re doing things that we’re doing right now.”

My mother is the most important and the strongest person I know, because it takes an unbelievably strong woman to do what she did.

He finished it there. “My mother is the most important and the strongest person I know, because it takes an unbelievably strong woman to do what she did. So thanks to her as well.”

Irina Zvereva was a professional player herself, with a one-handed backhand, and she was her younger son’s main coach until he was 13 or 14, while Alexander Zverev Sr. traveled with Mischa. Her son has credited her with the shot that has carried him: “I think I have pretty good technique, which my mum did at a young age, so credit to her for that. My backhand, in particular, is 100 percent down to my mum.” She has spoken publicly about the type 1 diabetes diagnosis he received at four, calling the early years “very, very difficult to control”.

Despite the real emotion in it, and the authenticity of the journey it describes, this part of the speech is hard to disconnect from Zverev’s public image, damaged by the testimony and legal action of two women accusing him of domestic abuse. Olga Sharypova made her allegations public in 2020. Brenda Patea, the mother of his daughter, brought her case in Berlin, where it ended in June 2024. Zverev has denied both accounts.

That past came back to him at Roland-Garros in June 2026, when he ended an interview with L’Équipe as the reporter put the question to him.

The rest of his thanks to the family went to the people who were there. “We went thirty years without winning a Grand Slam title and now we won two in a span of three months,” he told his team. “I think God has seen how hard we worked, how much we suffered, how much pain we went through. I think 2026 is the outcome of all the years that happened before.”