March 18, 2025
Alexander Zverev will hope a personal connection, as well as an affinity for the Florida climate, can inspire him to rediscover his best level at the 2025 Miami Open presented by Itau.
The top-seeded German enters the ATP Masters 1000 event after a difficult five weeks in the Americas, where he has gone 4-4 across Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Acapulco and Indian Wells. Yet there is an element of ‘home away from home’ about Miami for Zverev, who has often enjoyed the relatively fast-paced courts there.
“Miami is my favourite city in the United States. My favourite sports team is here with the Miami Heat, so I genuinely love being here,” said the 27-year-old, who began his 2025 season with a final run at the Australian Open, in a media roundtable on Monday. “I genuinely love spending time here. The conditions are just probably more suited for me [than Indian Wells]. The courts are a lot faster. It’s more humid, so the ball stops through the air maybe a bit more than in the desert.
“But we’ll see. I [have not been] playing my best the past few weeks. I started the season well in Australia, not playing my best now for a few weeks, but I hope I can turn it around here and show some good tennis again.”
The No. 2 in the PIF ATP Rankings, Zverev will take on Benjamin Bonzi or a qualifier in his opening match at Hard Rock Stadium, where he is seeking to build on his 17-9 record at the Miami Open presented by Itau. That tally includes a championship-match run in 2018 (at the tournament’s former home of Crandon Park), while he reached the semi-finals in 2024 before falling to Grigor Dimitrov.
“Here I really want to go match by match and try to win every single match that I play,” said Zverev, who is 12-5 for 2025, according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index. “I hope I can show that on court, I had some very good training sessions here, so I remember the feeling of how I played last year a little bit as well. So again, I’m just trying to show that on court in a match.”
One of Zverev’s rivals in the top half of the Miami draw is Jack Draper, who on Sunday defeated Holger Rune to claim his maiden Masters 1000 title at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. Zverev is seeded to face the Briton in the quarter-finals in Miami, in what would be the pair’s maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head clash.
“He’s been playing good since the end of last year, I think,” said Zverev of Draper. “He’s been improving and he’s a lot more consistent, especially I think on the forehand side, which was always a shaky shot for him. But he’s definitely a good player. Indian Wells is a tournament where a lot of players struggle, and a lot of players love it. I’ve always been more on the struggling side, unfortunately.
“He’s definitely a good player. He’s grown and he’s matured a lot, and he deserves to be a Masters 1000 champion. He deserves to be Top 10 as well, so it’s going to be interesting to see how [much] further he develops. Good for him and also good for Holger. Holger has been struggling a little bit over the past 18 months, so I’m happy to see him do well as well.”
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