Alexander Zverev walked off court exhausted and elated, the kind of tired that only a nearly five-hour dogfight can produce. The reigning French Open champion had just survived an epic first-round clash at the US Open, and his words carried equal parts relief and pride.
“I’m just happy I won,” he told the ATP Tour after the match. “Incredible battle. A lot of ups and downs. Nearly five hours for a first round. I think this is the longest first-round match I’ve ever played in my life.”
It felt like a statement as much as a reflection. Zverev has spent the last few seasons living on the knife-edge of triumph and heartbreak. Wimbledon finalist in July. French Open champion in June. And still, in New York, there’s a ghost he can’t quite shake.
The 2020 scar that won’t fade
Four years on, the 2020 US Open final still sits heavy on his shoulders. Zverev came within touching distance of his first major title that night, only to see Dominic Thiem turn the match around and rip it from him.
“I still feel like I should have won in 2020, that doesn’t change,” he admitted last week in a press conference. There was no attempt to sugarcoat it, no revisionist history. Just the blunt honesty of an athlete who knows exactly how close he came.
Yet this version of Zverev sounds different. Hardened. Battle-tested. Less haunted, more driven.
“I feel like I’m one of the 128 players that are favourites in the draw,” he added, a wry nod to the absurdity of trying to separate contenders from dreamers in a field this deep. He knows his name sits in the genuine conversation, not on the fringes of it.
A constant presence in the box
Through the turbulence of results, injuries, and expectations, one thing around Zverev has barely shifted: the familiar figure in his player’s box. For more than five years, his girlfriend Sophia Thomalla has been a steady presence, watching the rollercoaster from just a few metres away.
As Zverev rides the emotional waves of another New York campaign, Thomalla’s support is part of the now-familiar scene. Cameras often find her during tight moments, expression fixed, living every point with him.
Who is Sophia Thomalla?
Thomalla’s own story starts far from the bright lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium. She was born in East Berlin on October 6, 1989, just weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, into a family already steeped in performance. Her parents, Simone Thomalla and André Vetters, are both actors, and their separation in 1995 meant Sophia’s childhood was split across different cities and stages of life.
She spent her early years in Berlin before moving with her mother to Cologne and Kleinmachnow. The constant in all that movement was the world she grew up around: sets, scripts, and the culture of German film and television.
Thomalla built her own identity in that space, but she also pushed beyond it. Known for her striking tattoos, she started getting inked young, turning her body into something of a visual biography. One of the most talked-about pieces is a bold tattoo bearing the name and birth date of actor Sven Martinek, who dated her mother in the late 1990s, a detail once highlighted by German tabloid Klatsch-Tratsch.
It’s a snapshot of her approach: unapologetic, personal, and public all at once.
New York, old ambition
As Zverev grinds through another US Open, the echoes of 2020 still bounce around Flushing Meadows. The difference now is his résumé. He arrives not as the nearly man, but as the current French Open champion and fresh Wimbledon finalist, a player who has finally converted promise into silverware.
The first-round marathon he just survived may not define his tournament, but it says plenty about where he is. He’s prepared to suffer. He’s prepared to stay. And somewhere above the baseline, in the box he always looks to in tight moments, Sophia Thomalla will be there again, watching to see whether New York finally gives him the ending he believes he deserved years ago.
