Sleepless in Belgium! Bergs’ father awake at wee hours to watch son

Wade Thomas

It is 2 a.m. in the quiet village of Pelt, Belgium and while many of the 30,000 residents are sound asleep, Koen Bergs’ alarm rings. The proud father is up well before the sun, always tuning into Challenger TV to watch his son Zizou Bergs, no matter the time of day.

With the 24-year-old competing this week at the Tallahassee Tennis Challenger, Koen is planning his sleep schedule around the Florida tournament, six hours behind Central European Time.

“He’s definitely the biggest fan I have,” Zizou told ATPTour.com. “He’s always watching, always waking up. I don’t know how he does it. He apparently doesn’t need a lot of sleep.

“It started the more I got to play on the Challenger Tour, the more streaming there was. I remember especially in the beginning phase, when people were watching, it would give me extra motivation. I remember the first time I was playing a Challenger in Australia, he would wake up and I had someone else to talk to next to my coach if things weren’t going right, it would help. I think since then he’s never missed a match.”

^{Zizou Bergs at age 18 with his father Koen. Credit: Zizou Bergs}

Bergs, who is at a career-high No. 107 in the PIF ATP Rankings, is a seven-time ATP Challenger Tour champion, a tally that includes a title run last year in Tallahassee. When he kickstarted his title defence in Florida on Tuesday, an early wakeup call once again did not stop his father from watching, more than 7,000 kilometres away.

“If he plays late in the US, I try to get an hour of sleep. I set my alarm clock at one, 1:30 to wake up,” Koen said. “I’m lucky that I don’t need too much sleep during the night. Normally, depending on the night, I go back to bed around four, 4:30 to sleep another two, three hours. Then wake up and start the day.”

The Bergs family hosted a watch party at their home this past Sunday when Zizou was competing in the Sarasota Challenger final against Thanasi Kokkinakis. Luckily, the championship match was at 6 p.m. Belgium time, allowing for more than a dozen friends and family members to gather and watch Zizou from afar.

But if the Belgian is competing in the wee hours of the morning, the lone sound in the Bergs’ home is Koen’s alarm and sometimes the voice of Mike Cation, who has been commentating ATP Challenger Tour events for more than a decade.

“It takes me two minutes to get awake. I get a glass of water, I take the laptop and put the match on the TV, a big 65 inch screen, and I watch his match,” Koen said. “In the States, we have this live commentary from Mike, so it’s a bit of interaction. It’s very nice. After the match, it takes me at least half an hour to get back to bed because of the adrenaline and emotion.”

Bergs was inches away from his Top 100 debut in the PIF ATP Rankings this past week, just needing to beat Kokkinakis in the Sarasota Challenger final to seal the milestone moment. But a hard-fought three-set title match went the way of the Australian, forcing Bergs to wait on seeing a double-digit ranking next to his name.

Boasting a 16-10 match record across all levels this season, Bergs has shown flashes of his best tennis on big stages in 2024. He pushed Stefanos Tsitsipas to four sets at the Australian Open, qualified for the ATP 500 in Rotterdam and faced Andrey Rublev in the first round, and tested eventual champion Ben Shelton at the ATP 250 in Houston earlier this month.

No matter if it’s a showdown against a Top 20 player or a first round ATP Challenger Tour match, Koen is glued to every ball, even admittedly vocalising his support at the TV screen at times.

“I’m his biggest fan. Not only his father, but also a big fan,” Koen said. “Sometimes also his coach, it depends. I’m just part of the team and I play my role, first of all as a father. I think I’ve watched every match the past two-and-a-half, three years, wherever he plays and whatever the timing is. My mother does it also, she stays up at night to watch her grandson’s matches.”

Bergs began playing tennis at age three with his father. They both developed a passion for the sport from Koen’s father, who passed away last March. And when Bergs lifted the Tallahassee Challenger trophy a year ago, he was visually emotional as he dedicated the title to his grandfather three weeks after his passing.

Undoubtedly, Bergs is making his family proud as he continues his rise. And if it weren’t for his father’s encouragement and unwavering support, who knows if Bergs would even be where he is today.

“He was always the one who believed the most that I could make it,” Zizou said. “He was always like, ‘I believe in you, even though the results aren’t there.’ He always pushed me to do whatever I love to do, that was tennis. And he made sure that even if the times were complicated that I would continue persisting through it.”