Finger wagging has to be reserved for the Federers and Nadals of the world.
It's fun, but very, very arrogant. I like Federer's arrogance, but he's Roger Federer. He's earned the right to wag his finger when some younger challenger forgets who is on the other side of the net. He earned it through years of unparalleled dominance of his profession.
It's also very context-dependent. Federer doing it at RG 2011 against Djokovic, who was already looking ahead to the final vs. Rafa, was perfect. "Don't get ahead of yourself young man."
A (at least current) journeyman like Zverev doing it in a random match is just cringey. It's "asking Bouchard to twirl" level cringey.
I agree with this too, but I think Djokovic and even Murray and Wawrinka have done enough to be included with Federer and Nadal in this broad category. I'll just assume it was an honest mistake.
Point being, you need to have accomplished something of significance (like at least one slam win) before you start finger wagging after every point. And preferably you should be more accomplished than your opponent. Otherwise it looks even more ridiculous IMO.
One thing I'd like to mention though is that I wonder what the general response would be if Isner had done it instead of Zverev. Think about it. Just my opinion, but I sense that even less people would be saying they liked it and a few are only doing so now because it was Zverev and he's a young kid with upside. They want the confidence/arrogance (whatever you want to call it) from him because he needs it to break through according to some people, but if Isner had done it, having already peaked and not having a higher potential ceiling I think people would've gone mad with even more negative responses than we're seeing here.
Stuff like "What is he wagging his finger about, the stupid servebot" would've been said. I probably would've said it too tbh. But I guess that loosely goes back to the context from earlier about finger wagging being reserved for people who've backed it up already.
