Imagine that Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier have had the day before Thrilla of Manila met for jumping rope. Or Lothar Matthäus and Diego Maradona before the 1990 World Cup final for balls. Or Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve before the last race of the 1997 Formula 1 season for go-kart. So you have to imagine what happened on the tennis facility in Melbourne on Saturday afternoon: Alexander Zverev and Jannik Sinner sat side by side in stationary bicycles in the fitness room. They chatted a little and were in a good mood-like two friends who happen to meet in the Muckibude and will not fight for a Grand Slam title the next day.
That’s how it goes in profit tennis. The four-time Grand Slam winner Jim Courier, who now gives the questioner on the pitch, referred to the professional scene in view of these pictures from the training room as a “hiking circus”, and so it is: tennis professionals are I-AGs that within a tiny bubble Travel around the world and cannot avoid: “In team sports, the team each have their own changing your own; You share everything in tennis, ”says Courier:“ You sit in the same locker room, you share training facilities; Often you stay in the same hotels. So you meet permanently. “
Novak Djokovic also talked about this at this Australian Open – but not like Courier. The Serb takes up weather when it comes to inevitable encounters – he says that he feels exactly how his opponent is doing; So in good German: whether he was shit.
Despite intensive research, it could not be clarified what Zverev and Sinner chatted about during this encounter; From the Zverev environment, well-informed colleagues had only learned that the German was excited before his third Grand Slam final. Of course, this is not exactly an exclusive breaking news; Of course, Zverev is excited, he finally wants to win his first very big title. The more exciting question would be: did he show that – and if so: did Sinner be thunderous? The Italian is known for being blessed with the mind of a koalas in the eucalyptus chewing and therefore not sending any signals to opponents-but at the same time having a Djokovic-like feeling for the strength and weak phases of its opponents. Perhaps one of the two will reveal after the final whether cycling had some influence on the result.
There are not many stories handed down by encounters of this kind – but already; The former NBA basketball player Mark Jackson told her about Michael Jordan. “The evening before the game against the Bulls in the Madison Square Garden, Michael called whether I wanted to poker,” said Jackson, who was under contract with the New York Knicks: “We play until eight in the morning, at ten is training. I am dog tired when the game begins, but I only sit on the bench. ”The evening before that, he still conveyed something: that Jordan was an outdoor world against whom he will never win a title – which he never actually managed:“ In the end I look at the statistics: Jordan – 50 points! “
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