If it weren’t for the events that preceded it, it would have been a mundane story for 24 hours… However, whoever watched Sinner’s gestures and facial expressions after the transformed match ball saw the suppressed emotion.
Austerity, but also a huge relief.
This year’s Flushing Meadows was won by a “sinner”, at least that’s how the world media labeled the 23-year-old native of Bolzano. Sinner succeeded despite being – presumably innocently – trapped in the spring.
He is red-headed like a German
More than enough has been written about his doping scandal in recent weeks. Sinner’s body was contaminated with a banned substance that was transferred to him through the ointment on his physical therapist’s injured finger. That’s his explanation. The competent believed him.
Since March, he had to regularly prove his innocence. And at the same time win to keep the post of world number one. By the way, Sinner is the first ever Italian player to dominate the ATP ranking since its introduction in August 1973. He currently has a huge lead and it is hard to imagine anyone dethroning him before the end of the season.
“He comes not far from the border with Germany. He also acts and looks like a German. He is red-headed like Boris Becker. Matteo Berrettini is a real Italian, for example.
Here, people identify more with Ferrari’s mentality – when he’s going, no one will overtake him, but it might happen that he doesn’t run up to you in the morning.
However, Sinner is like a Mercedes that starts when it is plus or minus 50 degrees Celsius,” the legendary Czechoslovak tennis player Tomáš Šmíd, who has lived on the Apennine Peninsula for a long time, told us some time ago.
Sinner immediately won two of this year’s four Grand Slams and thus answered the question “who after Djokovic and Nadal”?
A year or two ago, we would say Alcaraz, Medvedev or Zverev. Of course, Sinner also belonged to a wider circle of adepts, after all, in 2019 he was announced as the rookie of the year on the men’s tour.
However, the Italian has made huge progress in the last twelve months.
In New York, he didn’t have a pair for two weeks, after all, he lost only two sets during the entire time. Although Djokovic and Alcaraz, the two big favorites, were knocked out right at the start, Sinner played top tennis and it is quite likely that he would have swept them on the way to the title.
He fought with doping demons, it was not an easy tournament for him, but he passed with flying colours.
On the way to the final, he defeated three Americans, but he seemed to save the best for last. On the fourth for the final match. He was absolutely sovereign in it.
The entire tennis scene was finally longing for a home winner. If Fritz could do it, he would be the first in 21 years to not only win the tournament at Flushing Meadows, but the Grand Slam overall.
Many celebrities attended the match – Dustin Hoffman, Matthew McConaughey, Jon Bon Jovi, Eddie Redmayne, Anna Wintour, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, Liev Schreiber, Noah Lyles, Seal, Jon Hamm – perhaps all of them agreed that Sinner’s triumph was absolutely deserved.
Jannik Sinner Jannik Sinner and his winning gesture.
This Italian, although we think of southerners that they do not know what a cool head is, is absolutely infallible in decisive and important matches.
The statistics of his final duels confirm that he is an absolutely deserved world number one. This year he was 100% in his six finals – Australian Open, Rotterdam, Miami, Halle, Cincinnati and US Open.
He could have been a skier
A lesser-known fact is that the boy from the Dolomites took skiing very seriously in his childhood. The local media write that at the age of eight he even won the national championship in giant slalom. Five years later, he decided to devote himself fully to tennis.
It is necessary to write that it is a loss for the skiing world, but a huge gain for the tennis world, because we can already say that Sinner will be one of the stars of the next decade.
“A sinner has conquered America,” headlined La Gazzetta dello Sport on Monday morning.
Spain’s Marca, on the other hand, wrote about , the sinner who “equaled Alcaraz’s double and confirmed the generational change.”
The doping finding in Sinner’s body was, is, and will continue to be the subject of discussions for a while. The debate about whether it is right and moral that he could play in New York.
He himself was worried about how the audience would receive him, but he didn’t get a squeal, but he did get an ovation. Perhaps this also makes him the first man in 47 years to win the first two Grand Slam titles in the same season.
“However, such a violation of tennis customs is not a sin,” the firstpost.com portal also dug.
“Of course, it was also very difficult for me to enjoy it at certain moments. Also, how I behaved or how I walked on the court in tournaments before was not the same as it used to be.
Anyone who knows me knows that something was wrong. However, I slowly restarted in New York,” he described his feelings to journalists.
More than ten
Sinner is constantly improving and will definitely add more to the two Grand Slam trophies. Several tennis experts also agree on this.
“When I was playing and Pete Sampras won his fourteenth Grand Slam, I would have bet my last dollar that no one would beat him. And then Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic appeared,” laughed Tim Henman in front of the Sky News camera.
The former British tennis player predicts that Sinner and Alcaraz will one day have a double-digit number of major titles, and in the context points to the fact that such greats as John McEnroe (7), Jimmy Connors (8) and Boris Becker (6) never reached this goal they did not approach.
French tennis glossator Marion Bartoli is even more specific. “Sinner will be fifteen one day and Alcaraz eighteen,” while she also did not forget about Djokovic, whom she still does not throw away.
“In the end, he will get 26 or 27 of them, and after him the era of the two most complete players awaits us.”
Photo: Profimedia
Jannik Sinner Jannik Sinner in the US Open 2024 final.
The US Open final may not have been as entertaining as we would have liked, but that is not Sinner’s “sin”. The future of tennis still looks pretty exciting.
Source: sportweb.pravda.sk
