{"id":8883,"date":"2025-06-21T23:20:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T03:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2025\/06\/21\/alexander-zverev-says-his-plane-was-hit-by-lightning-on-his-way-to-the-french-open\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T23:20:23","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T03:20:23","slug":"alexander-zverev-says-his-plane-was-hit-by-lightning-on-his-way-to-the-french-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2025\/06\/21\/alexander-zverev-says-his-plane-was-hit-by-lightning-on-his-way-to-the-french-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Zverev says his plane was hit by lightning on his way to the French Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Last year, German tennis player Alexander Zverev took the French Open final. This year, Zverev needs to see if the lightning strikes twice &#8211; figuratively.<\/p>\n<p>Zverev told reporters on Friday when his flight to Paris was available for open media in France <em>literally<\/em> He was hit by lightning and forced to turn around.<\/p>\n<p>advertisement<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were supposed to fly at 6:45pm yesterday evening, so we took off from Hamburg,&#8221; Zverev said via the Associated Press. &#8220;We were hit by lightning. We had to make an emergency landing in Hamburg.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>An unexpected shock caused him to arrive in France several hours later than expected. The 28-year-old German switched his flight around 1am and did not go to Paris until around 3am.<\/p>\n<p>Zverev said Czech players Jiri Lehekka, American Brandon Nakashima and Seed No. 28 were also on the plane.<\/p>\n<p>When explaining the incident, Zverev said the lightning strike was almost uneventful besides delays in travel.<\/p>\n<p>advertisement<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It made a bit of a fuss &#8212; there&#8217;s no real wobble,&#8221; Zverev said. &#8220;It was my first experience.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Zverev is third seeded in the French Open behind Italian Jannik Sinner and Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz. The Germans suffered a tough loss at Hamburg&#8217;s open and fell to French player Alexandre Muller with a tiebreaker in the third set in the 16th round.<\/p>\n<p>Zverev is scheduled to play his first French match on Sunday, facing 19-year-old American learner Tien, who defeated Zverev in a straight set at the Mexico Open in February.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, German tennis player Alexander Zverev took the French Open final. This year, Zverev needs to see if the lightning strikes twice &#8211; figuratively. Zverev told reporters on Friday when his flight to Paris was available for open media in France literally He was hit by lightning and forced to turn around. advertisement &#8220;We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[289,151,1594,2779,32,2778,24,290],"class_list":{"0":"post-8883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alexander","9":"tag-french","10":"tag-hit","11":"tag-lightning","12":"tag-open","13":"tag-plane","14":"tag-tennis","15":"tag-zverev"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}