At the U.S. Open, interminable ball bouncing and a debate about the serve clock

Leave it to Alexander Zverev to win two Grand Slam titles in one year, a monumental achievement, and leave tennis with a debate about ball bouncing.

Zverev left everyone with little choice. Over the past two weeks, the 29-year-old German, who is one of the more deliberate players in the game, became maddeningly so.

He always liked to bounce a tennis ball. During this fortnight at the U.S. Open, he bounced it and bounced it and bounced it some more. He bounced it somewhere around 12,000 times across his first five matches. He bounced it for roughly two and a half hours over the span of the tournament.

By the time the final major of 2026 was over, he was lifting the champion’s trophy and his opponents were calling for rule changes on serves.

Before first serves, there is a 25-second clock. Before second serves, players effectively have as much time as they want. And Zverev took his time during a 6-4, 7-6(2), 5-7, 6-2 win over America’s Ben Shelton in the U.S. Open final Sunday.

“I think that there should be some sort of rule,” Shelton said after the match. “I’m not sure exactly how you would do it, limiting time on second serve. You shouldn’t have unlimited time. I think it’s, for our sport, for the fans, tough to be sitting there that long for the next play, the next action to happen. I’m sure at some point it will be something that these tournaments look at, just because there is such a delay in play.”

It was the second time in three days that an opponent had openly criticized Zverev’s ball-bouncing habits.

Zverev said he was not aware of how much time he was taking. He laughed it off after his semifinal win against Karen Khachanov, expressing bemusement regarding his newly-lengthened habit and claiming to be unaware of it in the moment.

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” he said. “I saw the stat: like, I bounced it 12,000 times or something like that. That’s quite funny.”

At least it was to him.

He said he wasn’t counting, or trying to get to a certain number or find a certain feel.

“I don’t know why it increased so much,” Zverev said. “I saw it before the semifinal, so I was, like,‘ OK, it’s got to go less’. Then I forget about it every once in a while, and then it goes up to I don’t know what number it is.”

It’s a lot, often between 15 and 25 bounces.

Zverev is not the only excessive ball bouncer. Novak Djokovic does it. Cameron Norrie does it. Marin Čilić does it. Many others do it, too.

Plenty of players have long loved to mess around between serves. Toweling off. Breathing. Visualizing. Talking to themselves. Rafael Nadal had all sorts of tics to run through before each serve. In the late 2010s, the sport started experimenting with a serve clock before implementing it permanently to speed up the pace of play.

Khachanov, a friend of Zverev’s, said it didn’t surprise him but was still frustrating.

“It annoys not only me, of course. A lot of players. Because it takes so much time, really. You don’t know how to prepare for the serve,” he said after Zverev beat him. “You are, like, ready, and then it’s another 12 bounces, y’know, so you again do split step. You kind of try yourself, but every point (is) like that. At the end of the day, if it’s within the rules with the time between points…”

The rules in tennis can be a bit strange. That was on display Sunday.

At one point, Zverev got a warning for a clock violation. He walked up to the chair with a mild protest.

“I was at the line 30 seconds ago,” he told the chair umpire.

As Zverev bounced and bounced, Shelton would stand at the back of the court, twirling his racket.

The chair umpire even admonished the American to be in a ready position sooner, as though he was the problem.

Shelton promised he would always be ready when Zverev finally stopped the ball-bouncing and was finally ready to serve.

“That is a stupid rule that you’ve got to be sitting there if it’s a guy who has his routine,” Shelton said. “As long as you’re ready when he puts his hands together and starts bouncing the ball, that’s what should matter.”

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