Let’s go back to last September. Jannik Sinner just lost in the round of 16 at the US Open to Alexander Zverev in a sweaty five-set mess.
He has never reached the final of a Grand Slam. He’s only won one of the tournaments just below that level, and that’s only in the previous weeks. No one questions his promise, but few predict a rocket ride to the top, or anything like what has happened since then for the carrot-headed 22-year-old Italian.
Now fast forward seven months…
“He is currently the best player in the world,” said Grigor Dimitrov, the 32-year-old Bulgarian who now knows that better than anyone.
Dimitrov was defeated by Sinner in the Miami Open final on Sunday, 6-3, 6-1. It was the 23rd victory in 24 starts this season for Sinner. He thus reached second place in the new ranking, a huge achievement for him and the latest sign of tumult in a season which has been full of them.
For years, professional tennis, especially men’s tennis, has had an air of predictability.
Lately, everyone has been chasing Novak Djokovic, and the way last year went, where he won three Grand Slams, should have won the other and ended the year at first place, nothing indicated that this year would be any victory. different, unless Carlos Alcaraz is ready to take over.
On the women’s side, Iga Swiatek proved largely unassailable and figured to stay that way for some time.
As for the sport itself, the players complained about the endless schedule and a busy schedule that left them little free time, but the people who ran tennis, the leaders of the Grand Slam tournaments and of the men’s and women’s circuits, always raised their arms in the air and said: this is how it should be, now and forever.
It took three months for all of this to be thrown out the window, or perhaps put on a shelf is the better metaphor. After all, there’s still time for Djokovic to be Djokovic again, for Swiatek to win with the level of consistency that gave him 37 consecutive victories not so long ago, and for all the plans to reshape the sport to come to fruition. ‘extinguish as occasional efforts. the past.
And yet, at the first turning point of the 2024 tennis season, as play moves from the hard courts of Australia, the Middle East and North America that dominate the first quarter of the year to the organic surfaces of Europe For the spring and early summer, the mystery became the narrative, and never more so than at the Miami Open over the past two weeks.
If, last September, you had on your bingo card Sinner becoming the world’s dominant player and Danielle Collins, an American ranked 53rd in the world, winning a big title, then fair play to you. Few of us have, but that’s what the first quarter of the season is like: a world of surprise and chaos where what recently seemed so improbable becomes more and more likely as the weeks go by.
Djokovic hasn’t won a tournament all year and hasn’t even reached the final of the Australian Open, which he has won 10 times with virtually no resistance in recent years. Last week, he fired his longtime coach, Goran Ivanisevic, who had helped him win a dozen Grand Slam tournaments in recent years. Djokovic, who has replaced several other longtime members of his team over the past six months, said he did not know when or if he would appoint a new coach. He could fly alone for a while.
His heir apparent, Alcaraz, showed flashes of his former magical self at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., during the first half of the so-called Sunshine Double that concluded in Miami last weekend. But a player seemingly so filled with joy during his rise to the top of the sport said he has struggled for months to recapture those emotions in training and matches. Really.
Did you think Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas, aged just 25 and once signed to return to the game, could emerge from 2023 healthy and ready to deliver on his promise? Not really.
Tsitsipas, so dedicated to tennis for so long, balanced his preparations with some of the chaos outside of his previous world. He has been in love with women’s tennis star Paula Badosa since the middle of last year. He fell out of the top 10 in February and is hoping for a turnaround on the European clay he loves so much.
Swiatek was overwhelming at times and eminently beatable in others. Swiatek’s list of killers this season includes Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic and two Russians, Anna Kalinskaya and Ekaterina Alexandrova. Only Alexandrova is in the top 20.
The most likely candidate to topple Swiatek is Aryna Sabalenka, who briefly replaced her at No. 1 last fall, but she is just 3-3 since winning the Australian Open and is now dealing with a personal tragedy.
Two weeks ago, a recent boyfriend, Konstantin Koltsov, a former hockey player and her partner for much of the past three years, was found dead in what Miami police ruled a suicide. Sabalenka played at the Miami Open just days after Koltsov’s death, losing her second match, but has not spoken publicly other than posting a brief statement on social media.
“Konstantin’s death is an unthinkable tragedy, and even though we were no longer together, my heart is broken,” Sabalenka wrote. “Please respect my privacy and that of his family during this difficult time.”
She’s been training since her defeat, trying to get back to something close to normal, but it’s anyone’s guess what her state of mind will be when the clay court season begins this month. Sabalenka, 25, lost her father when she was 19.
As for the game itself, a corporate civil war is at hand, with the Grand Slams attempting to replace the current 11-month free-for-all season with a premium tour that includes only their own tournaments and the 10 other major market events. the schedule, such as the Sunshine Double, and the finals of each tour. Only the top 100 or so qualify.
The rest of the tennis would be relegated to a qualifying round. The other men’s and women’s tours, the ATP and WTA, hate this concept, because it removes much of their relevance. Their leaders are trying to strengthen a partnership with Saudi Arabia that would largely reinforce the status quo that dozens of players despise — and add another tournament in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
This tour allows players to participate in the longest sports season for a fraction of the money golfers and other athletes earn. They gave the leaders of their new association, the Professional Tennis Players Association, a mandate to “burn the boats,” and sooner rather than later. Further meetings to discuss it are expected to take place in Madrid at the end of the month.
Despite all the uncertainty, Sinner has strangely become the constant.
Four tournaments, three titles, one semi-final and only one loss – against Alcaraz, the eventual champion at Indian Wells. Not bad.
He felt he had turned a corner at the end of last season, when he beat Djokovic twice and led Italy to the Davis Cup final victory – but he didn’t envision winning with the clinical effectiveness that it has demonstrated this season. There is a quality which is, in the most technical tennis terms, bananas. “I didn’t expect that, that’s for sure,” he said.
There’s a seductive cruelty to the way Sinner beats people these days.
At some point, an opponent is rooting, trading service games, rallying back and forth. Then all it takes is a volley that comes off the racket a little too high, or maybe they get lazy on a forehand for a split second, not moving their feet and the move back without much zip.
Suddenly, this year is all the opening Sinner needs to leap forward and never look back.
He sprints on this short volley and drives it across the field. This soft ball which lands a few meters from the baseline allows him to take control of the rally. A game goes from par to 15-40 in an instant.
Then he rushes to block a 130 mph serve to the feet, sending whoever he’s coming at, an in-form Dimitrov or whoever, backpedaling and thinking they have to hit a miracle shot just to stay at equality, which they sort of do. And then they do the opposite.
In the end, they send overheads into the back wall, as Dimitrov did on Sunday at the end of the second set to seal his fate.
“You see how focused he is now, how determined he is,” Dimitrov said of Sinner. “Can he play better? I don’t know.”
Darren Cahill, one of Sinner’s coaches, says he absolutely can.
He and Sinner said this streak of success has its roots in all the strength and endurance training Sinner has done over the past two years with Umberto Ferrara, his fitness trainer. This allowed him to increase the speed of his shots and his serve, and play those long points that have him zigzagging up and down and across the court, for 20 and 30 shots, then bringing his heart rate back down. over the next 30 seconds so he can play another one.
Cahill has watched and coached some of the sport’s greatest players over the past 25 years: Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Djokovic. He didn’t want to start comparing Sinner’s achievements to theirs “but the level is there”, he said on Sunday evening.
What happens next? Probably a little more chaos.
Unlike so many Italians before him, Sinner is not at his best on clay. On Sunday evening, with a sparkling glass trophy placed in front of him, he was already talking about preparing for his first tournament on clay, in Monte Carlo, Monaco, the principality in the south of France where he resides.
Practice will begin Thursday, he said, with his first game a few days later. Maybe now he has the lungs to last during these long physical rallies and matches on earth, or maybe not. “Usually I struggle there,” he said.
Perhaps the clay will slow him down, leaving the door open for the re-emergence of Djokovic and Alcaraz. Nadal, who has barely played in a year and a half, is also in hiding, recovering from hip surgery and a subsequent muscle tear in that same area and preparing, at almost 38, for the dirt beaten red where he played untouchable for a long time.
And wouldn’t that be the kind of chaos that has become the order of the day?
Or would it be a return to order?
In 2024, nothing is really clear in tennis.
(Top photo: Frey/TPN/Getty Images)