Sinner And Alcaraz Rivalry Needs A Major Final After The Italian Job

Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are making their way towards the Roman amphitheater at the Campo Centrale on Sunday. Tommy Paul and Lorenzo Musetti tried their utmost to change the script at the Italian Open, but this was always a two-horse chariot race.

A Sinner-Alcaraz final is the perfect denouement before another fortnight of combat begins at Roland Garros on May 25. Rome is an extended Masters 1000 event, one of seven ‘Mini Grand Slams’ in the calendar. The four majors still remain the golden ticket for a global audience that demands a box set of drama crammed into digestible chunks. Sinner and Alcaraz are Gen Z A-listers. The question is, do they work well together onstage?

Sinner has returned to the court after a three-month doping ban and duly picked up where he had left off. The three-time Slam champion said he was using this tournament to see where his level might be after 90 days off-site. The world No. 1 dispatched Madrid winner Carlos Ruud with brutal efficiency in the quarterfinals, ceding only one game. The Norwegian knew exactly where Sinner’s game was, calling it “next level” alongside an expletive. After Paul had the cheek to win six of the first seven games on Friday evening, Sinner reeled off 12 of the next 15.

Alcaraz hasn’t turned the air blue, but his form on the red dust is the only potential barrier to Sinner making it 27 successive wins on the trot. The current French Open champion won in Monte-Carlo, was runner-up in Barcelona, and beat his mini-nemesis Jack Draper in the last eight on Wednesday. Alcaraz appears to have moved on from the rather tortured thoughts he expressed after succumbing to Draper at Indian Wells.

The Sinner and Alcaraz show had its best five-set movie at Flushing Meadows in 2022 where the credits rolled at just before 3am as the 19-year-old Spaniard prevailed in front of a sparse crowd. It was a match that deserved a packed stadium to a finish.

Last year’s French Open match at the semifinal stage was a scrappy affair. “You have to find the joy in suffering, that’s the key,” Alcaraz said. “Even more here on clay – long rallies, four-hour matches, five sets, you have to fight. But you have to enjoy suffering.” It appears no-one has told Sinner, who’s making tennis look ridiculously smooth, at least until he hit the Paul counterpunch.

The real narrative is that Sinner and Alcaraz might as well have their own private function room when it comes to closing out Slams. Novak Djokovic is struggling with his game and dismantled the coaching relationship with Andy Murray, while Alexander Zverev is too busy getting down on himself to win when it really matters.

Neither Alcaraz or Sinner has lost a Grand Slam final, but the audience deserves to see them both at their best at the same time on the last business day in a major. Their 200-minute Beijing battle in October was the kind of epic that could woo the crowds. Alcaraz leads the head to head 6-4 and has won the last three.

It’s what happened immediately after the China Open that raised a few eyebrows. Both Alcaraz and Sinner’s entourages flew out on the same plane to the next pit stop at Shanghai. “It’s nice that we are rivals on the court and then friends off the court.,” Sinner told ATP Media. The Wimbledon champion said that the two had a “good relationship” but “are not close friends.” Jimmy Connors wouldn’t approve of friendly fire.

The Alcaraz-Djokovic rivalry has (or had?) a real edge to it. The narrative of the elder statesman finding something deep within to try and flummox the young buck is gripping. Witness the 2023 Cincinnati and Wimbledon finals, the Olympics gold medal match and the recent Australian Open last-eight encounter. There were tears, anger, smiles and respect between the two combatants.

Sinner is a brilliant technician, a precise metronome in action, while Alcaraz can charge up his firepower and then go out of bounds. Sinner actually compared their playing styles to “fire and ice”. It’s just not exactly Borg and McEnroe yet.

Seven months ago, Sinner said he wakes up in the morning to try and understand how to beat Alcaraz. In the last few months, the U.S. Open champion has probably been sleep-deprived by other thoughts. A tight battle in the Colosseum of Court Centrale would be a good chance for tennis to turn the temperature up on a rivalry that is still in the warm-up stage for the big screen. Fire and ice would be nice.