Former world number five Musetti became the fifth man to defeat a player in his opening match as the world number one. But Zverev insisted that the pressure of being the top-ranked player was not the cause of his poor performance. Alexander Zverev made a losing start to his reign as world number one on Wednesday as the two-time Grand Slam champion went down 7-6 (7/5), 6-2 to an inspired Lorenzo Musetti at the Paris Masters. Playing his opening match in the round of 32 in the French capital, the German accumulated errors to tamely exit the tournament against the 24-year-old Italian.
“Stress, I don’t know if stress.
I was a bit annoyed, to be honest,” he told reporters.
The Italian was now brimming with confidence and after failing to convert a break opportunity in the first game of the second set, he made no mistake two games later as he capitalised on an error-strewn display from Zverev. Musetti continued to deploy a sliced backhand to devastating effect as unforced errors mounted on the 2024 Paris Masters champion’s side of the net, culminating in a second break which allowed the Italian to serve for the match.
“Personally, I felt that today, I was enjoying (it), even when I was losing in the tie-break, I kept that in mind to enjoy, you know, the beauty of this sport,” Musetti said on-court. “To simplify it, he played really good and I played really bad,” the 29-year-old said.
“The last couple of days, because, you know, achieving the world No. 1 status is something that I think every player dreams of.
