Alexander Zverev plane struck by lightning and made emergency landing | Tennis | Sport
Alexander Zverev has revealed his plane was struck by lightning on the way to the French Open. The 28-year-old was travelling to Paris after being knocked out of the Hamburg Open by Alexandre Muller on Wednesday.
Zverev has endured a difficult spell on the court and failed to progress beyond the second round in Hamburg. He was dumped out of the Italian Open at the quarter-final stage at the start of May and was dispatched by Francisco Cerundolo in the last-16 of the Madrid Open last month. But he won the BMW Open on the Munich clay in mid-April and will be one of the favourites to lift the trophy at Roland Garros after reaching the final of the Paris Grand Slam last year.
“My trip over was phenomenal, actually,” Zverev began as he detailed his experience. “Some funny stories there. My trip here was funny because we were supposed to fly yesterday evening at 6.45pm. We took off from Hamburg and we were flying together with [Jiri] Lehecka, [Brandon] Nakashima, some doubles guys – and we got struck by lightning.
“So we had to do an emergency landing back in Hamburg. Couldn’t find another plane, so everybody else flew the next morning. I took another plane and flew around 1am, so I arrived here at 3am.
“So that was quite funny. It was the first time [in my] experience [that a plane was] struck by lightning mid-air, which is funny because it was a little noise, no real wobbling, nothing, but yeah. So that was my trip over. Best story of Roland Garros so far.”
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