Jannik Sinner, the young and tall Italian player, scored his first major milestone in his record on Sunday by becoming champion of the Australian Open. After a great match, as expected, he managed to defeat the Russian Daniil Medvedev. The Moscow player once again suffered a very painful defeat in a Grand Slam final. It will be for him like those recurring nightmares that he will not be able to forget for many years. If two years ago he lost his chance to win the title at Melbourne Park after winning the first two sets in the final against Rafael, practically the same thing happened yesterday.
The last three occasions in which both players had faced each other had ended in favor of the transalpine and this fact, evidently, justified their status as favorites in the final. Apart from this, in his journey during the tournament Sinner had given up a single set in all of his matches; Medvedev, for his part, had been forced to go to the fifth set on three occasions to defeat his opponent.
Even so, and I understand that due to the pressure he felt, the young champion began his match somewhat hesitant and without the necessary conviction to hit the ball with the speed that he had in previous matches. So much so that he surrendered the first set by a clear 6-3 and two breaks of serve. In the semi-final match against Novak Djokovic, however, he had not given the Serbian a single ball of break in the four sets played.
With these clear signs of unrest, Medvedev was able to maintain the same tone in the next set, which was also scored 6-3, and I began to think that Jannik would not be able to withstand and overcome the nerves that a duel of such magnitude implies. .
But it was precisely in the next round, and when the situation had already become extremely pressing, that he managed to release his anxiety, began to hit the ball at greater speed, raised the level of the exchanges and once again gave the sensation of consistency and very high quality that he had been giving throughout the tournament. From that moment on, and I told this to my children, who did not miss a single point, the game, no matter how adverse the score was, became in the hands of Jannik Sinner. When a player’s hits are no longer enough to win, he has no choice but to resort to tactics. But Medvedev didn’t even have a choice. The power and precision of the Italian left him completely dismasted and with practically no options.
Once the match was over, I commented something else to my children (and to my daughter, who had called us to comment on the Italian’s victory that had made such a great impression on her in the recent Davis Cup in Malaga). I fear that this great and significant step could change the tennis landscape in the coming years.
Although Sinner had long been considered Carlos Alcaraz’s most likely rival, he lacked a victory of this magnitude to confirm it. Yesterday certain doubts that somewhat overshadowed his performance when he played high-tension matches were dispelled. There is little doubt that he has been the player with the greatest improvement in this last year. He has been able to defeat virtually all top 10including Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic. The newspaper archive is flagrantly favorable to him. In his last thirteen matches against a player ranked among the top ten in the ranking world championship, he has won twelve times. If we add to these data the enormous tranquility and confidence that winning a Grand Slam gives, we can only expect greater ease and daring in the coming months. And without a doubt, also, the confirmation that he will be our tennis player’s greatest rival in the coming years.
The most logical thing is to think that, from now on, the two of them will be the ones who will compete for supremacy on the world list.
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