The Greats and their Challengers

Alexander Zverev has finally won a “major” tennis tournament, this year’s French Open. This means that I have also won an argument — one I had almost a decade ago, when Zverev and his brother Mischa had breakout performances at the 2017 Australian Open. I remarked upon this on Facebook, writing positively about their prospects, and an old acquaintance from my days in scholastic chess, now a highly successful online streamer as well as the second-highest rated player in the world, told me that I had misevaluated them, that neither had what it took to win anything important. Hikaru even suggested — rather generously to my family, despite our humble accomplishments — that the Zverevs were the tennis equivalents of what the Traldi brothers had been in youth chess.