ZVEREV ABUSE CLAIM

WORlD No 7 and recent US Open finalist Alex Zverev has been rocked by claims made by an ex-girlfriend that he was the perpetrator of domestic abuse.

The 23-year-old German is the subject of allegations made by former partner Olya Sharypova.

The claims come in the immediate aftermath of a different one-time partner, Brenda Patea, saying she is expecting Zverev’s child.

Neither Zverev ( pictured) nor his representatives have responded to requests for comment on the hitherto unverified suggestions made by Sharypova, although in an interview with the Russian publication Championat she expressed a willingness to take a lie detector test.

According to her the incidents mainly took place during last year’s US Open in New York, 12 months ahead of him reaching the final this September.

‘The first time this happened at the beginning of this relationship, there was a quarrel and I got hit with my head against the wall with so much power that I sat on the floor,’ she suggested.

‘I ran out of the hotel barefoot. I was standing on the streets of New York and didn’t know where to go and what to do,’ said Sharypova, adding that the Hamburg-born star of Russian parentage ‘tried to choke me with a pillow, hit my head against the wall, twisted my hands. At that moment, I was really afraid for my life’.

Zverev’s next tournament is the Paris Masters — announced yesterday as being played behind closed doors — and his last event is due to be the ATP Finals at the 02 Arena, beginning on November 15. He won the title there in 2018.

BRITISH No 1 Dan Evans will meet Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov in the quarter-finals of the Erste Vienna Open after beating Austria’s Jurij Rodionov 7-5, 6-3.