Zizou Bergs, the Belgian tennis player who stopped bowing to the elite

Photo: si.robi / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	June 3, 1999 Lommel
Occupation	Tennis Player
Awards	ATP Tour singles title · 8 ATP Challenger Tour singles titles

Zizou Bergs has a habit he describes as both a virtue and a handicap. After beating Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets at the Shanghai Masters, the Belgian said he often has “too much respect for these guys”, that the reverence comes from his culture and that he is proud of it. He said it on the night he took apart the world’s third-ranked player, and the timing gives his career its live question: what happens to a player built on patience, Challenger mileage and good manners once he decides the men at the top can be beaten, and not only admired?

The name arrived before the tennis did. His parents, Koen Bergs and Anne-Mie Driesen, called him Zizou after Zinedine Zidane, the French footballer who carried that nickname, and the boy from Lommel, in Belgian Limburg, was handed a racket at three. He grew up in a family with no sporting dynasty behind it: his mother is a photographer, his father a senior executive at a Belgian train company, and he has a brother, Maxim. The influence later ran in both directions. The ITF has since profiled Koen Bergs as a player who had decided to compete at the federation’s world championships himself, pushed by his son’s example.

Bergs, born on 3 June 1999, turned professional in 2018 and spent the next five years on the circuit most fans never see. His tour-level debut came as a wildcard at the European Open in Antwerp in 2020, where he beat Albert Ramos Viñolas and took Karen Khachanov, then world No. 17, to a third set. In 2021 he won three Challenger titles in a single season, from Saint Petersburg to Almaty, and broke into the top 200. A year later he won the Ilkley Trophy as a qualifier, beating Jack Sock in the final, and the reward was a wildcard for his Grand Slam debut at Wimbledon.

Then the body intervened. A torn ligament in his left wrist kept him off the tour for months in 2023, and he rebuilt his ranking the slow way, closing that year with Challenger titles in Drummondville and Yokkaichi. The return paid off at Roland Garros in 2024, where he came through qualifying, beat the 24th seed Alejandro Tabilo and reached the third round before Grigor Dimitrov stopped him. In Rome that spring he drew Rafael Nadal in the first round and lost, and in the summer he played the Paris Olympics.

The real shift came in 2025. As a qualifier in Auckland he won his way to his first ATP final, which he lost to Gaël Monfils. In Miami he beat Andrey Rublev for his first win over a top-10 player and dedicated it to his late grandfather, two years after his death. A second final followed on grass in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, lost to Gabriel Diallo. Around the same time he began working with Jan de Witt, the German coach who had guided Gilles Simon and Monfils. That autumn, in the space of about a month, Bergs ran into the top of the sport three times: Alcaraz beat him in Tokyo, Novak Djokovic ended his first Masters 1000 quarterfinal run in Shanghai, and Jannik Sinner stopped him in Paris. De Witt later summed up the lesson in an ATP interview: those players are incredibly good, and next time the goal is simple, which is to beat them.

The record has a less flattering side, and it sits in the majors. Bergs has reached the third round of a Grand Slam four times and has never gone further. At Wimbledon this year he led the British wildcard Arthur Fery by two sets to one and 4-1 in the fifth, and lost after four hours and 38 minutes. At the US Open, seeded 31st, he led Botic van de Zandschulp by two sets to one and had the Dutchman two points from defeat in the fourth-set tie-break before losing in five. There is also the image of him that Chile still keeps. During a Davis Cup tie in February 2025, Bergs celebrated a point and struck Cristian Garín with his shoulder; Garín went down holding his eye, refused to return and lost the match on time violations. The umpire, Carlos Ramos, called it an unfortunate accident without intention, while the Chilean federation asked the ITF to overturn the result. The player who talks about too much respect is, on court, an emotional and physical competitor, and both versions are accurate.

The current season began with a statement and then stalled. At the United Cup in January he beat Félix Auger-Aliassime, ranked fifth, 6-4, 6-2. By the time he reached Eastbourne in June he had lost six tour-level matches in a row. The final against Ugo Humbert was split by rain across two days; Humbert took the first set, and Bergs won 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 on 28 June to become, in the ATP’s words, the first Belgian man to win an ATP Tour title on grass. The celebration, he later admitted, involved a Stella poured into the trophy. Two days later he beat Humbert again in five sets in the first round at Wimbledon. In August he climbed to a career-high No. 33.

Shanghai brought the result the past year had been building towards. Ranked 39th, Bergs beat Alcaraz, the second seed, 7-5, 7-6 on 12 October, breaking his serve three times and winning 79 percent of points behind his first serve. The defeat ended a seven-match winning streak for the Spaniard and settled the year-end No. 1 ranking in favour of Alexander Zverev. “I feel like now I really can win against these guys,” Bergs said afterwards, which is close to the exact sentence his coach had set as the target.

He lives in Antwerp these days. Next up is Tommy Paul in the fourth round in Shanghai, with a chance to match last year’s quarterfinal, and after that the real measure of the breakthrough: whether the player who finally beat Alcaraz can also clear the third round of a Grand Slam.

Tags: sports, athletes, Carlos Alcaraz, tennis players, Zizou Bergs, Shanghai Masters

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