Background and career
Alexander "Sascha" Zverev (born 20 April 1997) is a German professional tennis player. Zverev has won 26 ATP Tour singles titles, including two majors at the 2026 French Open and 2026 US Open, a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, seven ATP 1000 events, and the 2018 and 2021 ATP Finals.
Zverev is a former junior world No. 1, and won a junior major singles title at the 2014 Australian Open. He had an early breakthrough on the professional tour, becoming one of the youngest ATP Challenger Tour title winners in history at the age of 17. As a teenager, Zverev won two ATP titles and upset then–world No. 3 Roger Federer on grass. At 20 years old, he became the youngest player to debut in the top 20 since Novak Djokovic. At the Laver Cup, Zverev played an instrumental role in Team Europe's early success, winning the clinching matches in 2018, 2019, and 2026.
After reaching his first major final at the 2020 US Open, he became an Olympic gold medalist in 2021. He suffered an ankle injury at the 2022 French Open, which required an extended recovery period. He rebounded in the following years to re-enter the top 10, where he has since remained a permanent fixture and reached five more major finals. In 2026, Zverev enjoyed his most successful season winning the French Open and US Open, and is guaranteed to rise to number 1 in the world rankings in November 2026.
Alexander Zverev was born on 20 April 1997 in Hamburg, Germany, to Russian parents Irina Zvereva and Alexander Zverev Sr. His older brother, Mischa, born nearly a decade earlier, was also a professional tennis player. Both of his parents were professional tennis players for the Soviet Union. His father, who ranked as high as No. 175 in the world, became the top-ranked men's player nationally, while his mother was the fourth-highest-ranked women's player in the Soviet Union. They both moved from Sochi to the capital to train at the CSKA Moscow military-run tennis club. The Soviet government often restricted their players from competing outside the country, an impediment that limited how high either of Alexander's parents could rise in the world rankings. With the collapse of the Soviet Union imminent, Irina went to Germany to compete at a tournament in 1990, with her husband accompanying as her coach. While in Germany, they were offered jobs as tennis instructors. After initially declining, they accepted an offer to work at the Uhlenhorster Hockey Club in Hamburg the following year and ended up settling in the country.
Zverev, known in his family as Sascha (the Russian-language diminutive for Alexander), started playing tennis at the age of three. Since he began playing tennis at a very young age, he has said, "One day, when I was, I think, one year and five months old, I just picked up a little racket and I was starting to push the ball all over our apartment, and since then, they took me out on the court. I enjoy it still, I enjoyed it back then." When he was five years old, he started to play tennis at least half an hour each day. He was extremely competitive as a child. His brother, Mischa, said, "He would not understand or accept that he was losing," when the two would play against each other. He would never want to leave the court unless he won the match. He also played hockey and football as a child but decided to focus only on tennis around the age of twelve after an early-round loss at a high-level international junior tournament in Florida.
How Alexander Zverev makes money
After the match, he pledged to donate all his prize money from the tournament to relief efforts for the ongoing bushfires if he won the title, a total of A$4.12 million.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth, in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
