After absorbing a first-set shellacking from Karen Khachanov, Alexander Zverev made a personal plea.
Tell your uncle to tone down the chatter.
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Zverev, who took treatment for a strained shoulder during his 6-1, 6-2 Rolex Paris Masters quarterfinal loss, approached Khachanov near net at the end of the first set.
The fourth-seeded Zverev confessed to the shoulder injury and asked his friend to press the mute button on his chatty uncle.
"I told him my shoulder is hurting and that his uncle, or something, that he's going a bit crazy," Zverev said. "And I told him to tell him to keep it down a little bit because he was going a little bit too much over the edge.
"I mean, I was never going to win the match, so it was just I told him to calm down a little bit."
Zverev did not hold serve in the opening set. He coughed up his fourth double fault donating serve with a double fault for the second time in a row as Khachanov cashed in his third consecutive break for a 4-1 lead.
In the aftermath of that sloppy service game, Zverev took an injury time out for treatment of his strained shoulder. Khachanov converted his third consecutive break to close the opening set.
Khachanov downplayed the exchange as Zverev simply blowing off some steam.
"When you are playing and you are losing sometimes, you just get a little bit frustrated and upset," Khachanov said. "And maybe some calls or some noise makes, you know, more problem and more frustration for you. So that's why. And then you cannot just think about the other people.
"So everything is fine between us and there is no problem. Just during the match sometimes it's tough to control the emotion."
The 21-year-old Zverev candidly confessed he knew he was going down during warm-up because his shoulder pain limited his serving strength.
"At today's warmup [I knew I would lose], because, I mean, I had pain the whole week. And I did hours of treatment," Zverev told the media in Paris. "And after yesterday's match, I had a lot of pain in the evening and during the night as well. And then today during the warmup, you know, especially on my second serve where I was doing the kick motion, I mean, I had a lot of pain. And just kind of stretching, and it was tough.
"But, I mean, I don't want to take anything away from him. He's playing great so credit to him as well."
Photo credit: Christopher Levy