The tennis is back on, it’s as good as we remember, and your friends at The Second Serve find themselves pondering the one topic on every fan’s mind. That’s right: world No. 42 Zizou Bergs.

Ah. Perhaps you are not yet thinking about the plucky 26-year-old who wears a backward hat and was named after the great Zinedine Zidane. Well, now is as good a time as any to start. Bergs spent much of his early career on the Challenger tour—his father used to religiously wake up in the middle of the Belgian night to watch Zizou play and listen to excellent commentator Mike Cation—but he broke into the top 50 late last season. He’s got some game, and moreover, he’s a bit of an entertainer, who has shouted “Where is the party?” to rile up the Roland-Garros crowd, and has often found himself entangled in thrilling matches. That last bit is especially true when he’s representing his country. What is it about Zizou Bergs that reliably produces such absurd drama whenever he’s in a team competition? Whatever it is, it’s happening again this week at the United Cup.

The trend stretches back to February 2025. Davis Cup tie between Belgium and Chile. Zizou Bergs in a tight third set against Cristian Garin. The Belgian dipped a forehand pass to break serve for 6–5, took a celebratory hop-skip, started running, and kept running into the changeover, where, at the net post, he collided with an unsuspecting Garin. Oops. Garin fell to the ground. Bergs apologized for his reckless celebration and was issued a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct. But Garin was infuriated by this ruling. He wanted the punishment to be more severe. In fact, so committed to this principle was Garin that he refused to start the match again. As a result, he received three consecutive code violations. The first was a warning, the second was a point penalty, and the third was a game penalty—which, unbelievably, ended the match and decided the whole tie in Belgium’s favor. Legendary scene. Garin later said that he was knocked unconscious for three seconds. Though Chile’s own team doctor disputed the unconscious part, he did conclude that the impact to Garin’s eye socket left him in no condition to play on. Chile’s Olympic committee hoped that “this shameful international incident does not go unpunished.” All this because Bergs was a little too happy to have broken serve.

That wasn’t even the craziest thing that happened to Zizou Bergs in Davis Cup last year. That honor goes to a match played nine months later, in the semifinal between Belgium and Italy. For all the flaws of latter-day Davis Cup, sometimes the atmosphere at those matches is just otherworldly, and that was true of the frenzied stadium in Bologna that day. In front of that home crowd, Bergs took on Flavio Cobolli—another player prone to playing epics, another baseline battler with superb movement. The two arrived at a third-set tiebreak. That tiebreak alone lasted 27 minutes. Bergs saved six match points, some in spectacular fashion; Cobolli saved seven. Italian teammate Matteo Berrettini was so nervous that he couldn’t watch at times, cowering under his shirt. Papa Bergs, no longer watching a Challenger live stream from afar, was huffing and puffing in the stands. It is not an exaggeration to say it was one of the best tiebreaks ever played. Cobolli took it 17–15 and tore open his shirt. A little later he would walk over to comfort a crying Bergs.

So when Bergs opened up the 2026 season representing Belgium at the United Cup, he was poised to continue this legacy of great entertainment in team competition. Thus far he has not disappointed. His very first match of the year was a three-set thriller against Zhizhen Zhang. A battle of abundant z’s, and a high-level affair that Bergs ultimately lost, 6–7, 7–6, 7–5. But Belgium continued to advance in the tournament, and he soon rebounded with two straight upsets: one over Felix Auger-Aliassime, and another over Jakub Mensik, both in straight sets. This is new territory for our hero. Before this tournament, Bergs had been 2–16 against top 20 opponents. He has started his season by winning two such matches in a row, and his team is still rolling. What else could the great Bergs accomplish this week, or indeed this season? Our editor Dave Shaftel recently pulled a signed Zizou Bergs in a pack of Topps tennis trading cards, which we can only take as an auspicious sign. May he prosper, win a dozen Slams, and boost its value.