A look at Alexander Zverev’s finger-wagging run to the Miami quarters

Tennis’ newest family, the Zverevs, are a lot more mellow than some others we’ve seen in recent years. When the youngest son, Alexander, is playing, his father and brother, Mischa—and Mischa’s girlfriend—don’t leap up and clench their fists after every winning point. Instead they sit back coolly and casually, hardly cracking a smile as the youngest sibling battles for his life. Father and brother are tour veterans, and they’ve seen it before.

But Mischa couldn’t help letting out a chuckle on Monday when Alexander added a new wrinkle to his celebratory repertoire in his match against John Isner. After surprising Isner with a wide second serve, Zverev stepped back, raised his hand toward his box and wagged his index finger back and forth. This move has descended, by my rough estimation, from the NBA’s Dikembe Mutumbo to Roger Federer, and on to Zverev’s fellow German, Angelique Kerber, But I hadn’t seen it from Zverev before.

Zverev has worked hard over the last two years to get his sometimes-volatile emotions under control, but maybe loosening up helps. He was more animated than normal, in a positive way, in the Isner match. He finger-wagged, threw his fist in the air after hitting a winner and fist-pumped on points when no fist pump seemed to be in order.

In the end, it didn’t seem to be a coincidence that, despite facing three match points and Isner’s demoralizing serve for two-and-a-half hours, Zverev stayed positive enough to pull through in three tiebreakers. Two weeks ago in Indian Wells, Nick Kyrgios made Zverev look like the 19-year-old kid that he is. Against Isner, Zverev played like the man, and the crowd-pleasing star, that he’s soon going to become.

Another part of growing up on tour is learning to win matches on back-to-back days. Thinking ahead to Zverev’s Tuesday meeting with Stan Wawrinka, I wondered if he would be ready to face the top seed 24 hours after facing down Isner. But again, over the course of his 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 win on the Grandstand, you could see Zverev mature a little more. He lost the first, but rather than get tired or down on himself, he relaxed; not many guys hit the ball as well as Zverev does, from both sides, when he’s relaxed and in the flow.

It helped that Wawrinka offered very little resistance to that flow. A few years ago, Mardy Fish told me that he always felt confident in Miami when he went a set up on a European player; after three weeks in the States, they’re ready to head home (the same goes for U.S. players at the French Open). Wawrinka had a long and mostly successful run in Indian Wells, and by the third set on Tuesday he looked like he wanted to get his 32nd birthday festivities started early.

But that only offered another learning experience for Zverev. Finishing off an opponent who has checked out, especially a highly-ranked opponent who has checked out, isn’t as straightforward as it may look. When there’s nothing standing in the way of a victory, it’s easy to overthink, relax too much or get nervous. Instead, Zverev showed how impervious his shots are to all of those potentially destabilizing psychological aspects of the sport.

The biggest reason to believe that Zverev is going to be a Top 5 (or higher) player is that he has weapons that are solid enough to withstand pressure. His serve and his backhand, in particular, are always there for him, and they helped him make finishing off the top-seeded Wawrinka look easy.

When it was over, there was no need to wag his finger.

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