He says it is a shakedown.

This foreign born A+ list tennis player is being accused of s.e.x.u.a.l.l.y assaulting a woman who was invited to his hotel room last week.

He says it is a shakedown.

Alexander Zverev

Germany

Tennis silent as abuse allegations hang over Alexander Zverev

Casual tennis fans around the world would have been forgiven for assuming that Alexander Zverev did not play last week. At the Paris Masters, the penultimate big tournament of the year, Zverev won four matches to reach the final but each time he entered the court many of the bustling official tennis social media accounts fell silent. Although he beat Stan Wawrinka in straight sets, Tennis TV provided only footage of his opponent’s successes. When he faced Rafael Nadal, his presence in the match was noted only when he won. No explanation was offered.

It isn’t difficult to suggest a reason for the silence. A few days before the tournament began, Zverev’s ex-girlfriend, Olga Sharypova, uploaded an Instagram post stating that she had been a victim of domestic violence by a former partner.

She later said that Zverev was culpable and in a long interview with Ben Rothenberg in Racquet Magazine published last Thursday, Sharypova offered a harrowing account of the violence she said escalated from Zverev hitting her head into the wall to pushing, choking and punching her in the face. After one such encounter in Geneva, she said that she injected herself with insulin in a suicide attempt. “I didn’t want to live any more,” she said.
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Much of what Sharypova described are common themes of abuse. She stressed the impact of the controlling, coercive behaviour she said Zverev imposed on her and she chronicled a cycle of abuse, which her childhood friend Vasil and his stepmother both admitted to reinforcing by pushing her back towards Zverev because they initially did not believe her. Even her stated decision to speak out on her terms was notable: less than half of non-fatal domestic abuse is reported to the police. Many who do so struggle with the traumatising legal process that follows.

Zverev has denied Sharypova’s accusations. In a statement shortly after her Instagram post, he called her comments “simply not true” and “unfounded”. After numerous questions in Paris, it was not until his pre-tournament press conference at the ATP Finals that he expanded on it in a statement read from a phone on his lap: “We had our ups and downs, but the way our relationship was described in the public is not how it was. That’s not who I am, that’s not how I was raised by my parents. That’s not just simply who I am as a person. It makes me sad that the impact of such false accusations can have on the sport, on the outside world, on myself as well. I truly apologise that the focus has shifted away from the sport. We all love playing tennis, that’s what we’re here to do.” – Source