Steve Flink on Zverev, Sinner & Disappointment Rankings at Roland Garros '26 | Monday Match Analysis

**Gill Gross** (0:01)
Welcome, everyone, to this special interview edition of Monday Match Analysis. I'm Gill Gross. It's the traditional post-major chat with Steve Flink, Roland Garros, 2026
We hit on a lot of players in this one. I'm gonna go backwards for your little tease before we get into it. I made a disappointment power rankings. Yes, I ranked the players in order of how disappointed I think they should be with the RG result. I did that because more players than usual will leave that event and look back at that event and feel disappointed because of how it played out. So, disappointment power rankings. I'm gonna talk about the mid-2000s guys.
Hodar Menchik Fonseca, born in the mid-2000s, as those guys all had really positive results. We sort of learned a little bit more about each of them at this year's Roland Garros. We do talk about Jannik Sinner and the physical collapse against Juan Manuel Sorindolo and just trying to understand what all of that means. But we start, as always, of course, with Alexander Zverev winning the title, dissecting the final against Kaboli and how he got there. Without further ado, here's Steve Flink. We're joined once again by Hall of Fame tennis writer Steve Flink for our traditional post-major chat Roland Garros 2026
A slam that is probably unlike any that we've ever talked about. Steve, thanks for being on again.

**Steve Flink** (1:31)
Good to be with you, Gill.

**Gill Gross** (1:33)
So let's start with Zverev. That's not going to change. We're going to start with the champion. And I'm going to kind of throw my theory your way. I want to see what you think.
I think that there's a small picture story here and a big picture story here. And those two stories are very different. The big picture story is that Zverev has been incredibly resilient to remain at the top of the game for as long as he has, despite all of the setbacks, and he's put himself in the mix so many times that it was inevitable that something was going to break his way.
And also, he's improved quite a lot in the last two to three, maybe two to four years. He has become a better player. He has made a run like this more likely. That's the big picture story. The small picture story is that things broke so well for him that in the final he didn't necessarily have to use any of those improvements, wasn't really able to, and it didn't matter.
And it would have been hard to imagine any scenario or at any point in Zverev's career where he wouldn't have been able to win a slam given how this all kind of shook out. So the big picture story, tons of credit to Zverev. I think it's been really impressive what he's done. In the small picture, zooming in on the final itself, zooming in on the tournament itself, it was a little bit more about circumstance.

**Steve Flink** (3:00)
Yeah, it's a tricky one. I have to say, given throwing everything into the mix, that I'm more on the big picture because I think in the end, Gill, you and I, we've watched a lot of majors. We know, obviously, we've seen Al Garros and Sinner having to go through each other constantly in finals. We saw Djokovic, Federer and Nadal for all that span of time from 3 through 23, constantly meeting in semis and finals. I get it. I understand that. And those are extraordinary players and extraordinary achievements. But given what Zverev has endured in his career, given that he has had wins at the majors, he's beaten Al Garros twice in majors. He beat Sinner once at the US Open. He's had some big wins over great players at different times. And then unfortunately for him in his three major finals, two of them went five and they didn't go his way. He had Al Garros two sets to one in that French final a couple of years ago. And he had team two sets to love in a break in the 2020 US Open final. So look, I really I'm ready to cut him the slack and say to me, I'm going much more heavily on the big picture and say he still had to beat a young and rapidly improving Hodar. He still had to beat Menchik, who was really one of the more impressive performers in the tournament, getting to his first big semi at a major, backing up what he did in Miami a year ago when he won that title.
And he still had to overcome Corboli.
You could say some of it was of his own making Gill that it went five because I thought he should have probably I thought he had controlled the match up till a set and three all in the second and suddenly from 30 love he let his serve get away and I thought he had regained control of the match at the end of the third when he broke Corboli to win the third set six four and then he started the four set off miserably and nearly pulled it off nearly he broke back twice and nearly pulled it off when he went up three one in the tiebreak. But so you could say he contributed to his own woes in that match and that maybe he should have gotten it done sooner. To me, I guess I give him all the more credit that when the fifth set was on the line and both guys had had cramping issues that he got it done and it wasn't pretty by any means. It was one of the least attractive finals in that sense from an aesthetic standpoint. But I still say, look, this guy has gone through so much misery and we know he's a two-time year-end ATP finals champion, seven Masters, one thousand. He's done so many great things in the game and he didn't reach those three previous finals by accident. So I'm ready to say, look, considering the entirety of his career, I'm going big picture. What about you?