CENTRE COURT — Jannik Sinner joined the pantheon of tennis greats who have successfully defending the Wimbledon title when he beat Alexander Zverev 6-7 7-6 6-3 6-4 on Sunday night.
Watched by the Prince and Princess of Wales, as well as two of their children George and Charlotte, Sinner bounced back from losing the first set in a tie-break to end French Open champion Zverev’s effort to double his major title tally just a month after opening his account.
Sinner meanwhile now has five major titles to his name, but it is the back-to-back wins at SW19 that puts him in storied Open Era company: Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Boris Becker, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz.
Each name in the list carries significant weight in the men’s game, and having joined them in style, Sinner’s name can never be erased now.
The final though was not a classic in the traditional sense.
The second point of the entire match was a 22-shot rally, suggesting this would be the kind of baseline slugfest of which Sinner has become the undisputed champion. It was an entirely false dawn, and this will go down as a throwback final, one dominated by serve in a manner not seen since Andy Roddick was sending missiles down against Roger Federer in the 2009 final.
But Sinner, showing no signs of rust having not played a warm-up tournament on grass or the heat illness that had afflicted him so catastrophically in Paris a month ago, found a way to break serve twice in a three-and-a-half-hour arm-wrestle.
Zverev’s weakness is and has always been his forehand. It is an open secret in tennis. Tactical plans for beating him have often boiled down to “if in doubt, hit it to his forehand”. But there has been marked improvement on that wing: realistically, no player with such a glaring shortcoming could win a clay-court major, and he did exactly that just 35 days ago.
In that time, a man whose game has looked fragile on grass has grown into a giant of men’s tennis, and the forehand has been a fitting metaphor for that. It was never more evident than when, deep in the first-set tie-break, he unleashed a powerful winner from a central position, finding an angle that even Sinner had not imagined, and taking an unexpected lead over the world No 1. He had lost his last nine matches against the Italian, and not won even a set in more than 11 hours of tennis. Game on.
As for Sinner, his world-leading forehand has been misfiring at Wimbledon this year, by his own admission. It hadn’t mattered much earlier in the tournament, since Sinner is so superior to the mere mortals outside the top echelon of the game that you suspect he could beat most of them without a forehand at all.
But Zverev will be the world No 2 on Monday for a reason, and Sinner was made to rue the error that spurned the only break point of the opening set. It would be hours before he forced another one, deep in the third set.
His opponent though was red-lining, as they say, and no one red-lines better than Sinner. He can rev his engine at a level almost no one in world tennis can match, and Zverev eventually found out. The relentless baseline pressure eventually told in the second-set tie-break, when Sinner started to line up his opponents 140mph serve, and as a result the German’s forehand finally broke down.
It started to feel inevitable that this was a Sinner comeback and not a ding-dong battle that Zverev could swing back in his favour. He did force his first break point of the match well over two hours into proceedings, but a slip behind the baseline and a bash of his right knee seemed to take the wind form his sails. Sinner saved the break point, broke himself one game later, and Zverev’s racket was thrown from his hand. Along with it went his nerve. Sinner smelled blood, and did not look back.
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