E-Paper
Why teenager Jannik Sinner may be the next big thing in tennis
That the Italian is the most exciting young talent in tennis currently was reiterated at the ATP 1000 Miami Open, where he reached his maiden Masters final after beating higher seeded players in Karen Khachanov (second round) and Roberto Bautista Agut (semi-final).
Perhaps the most endearing moment of the ATP Miami Open came across the net after the quarter-final match between Jannik Sinner and Alexander Bublik.
"I love you, but you're not human," Sinner teased Bublik after beating him as the two shook hands. Bublik, walking towards the chair umpire, teased him back.
"What do you mean?" he replied. "You're not a human, man. You're 15 years old and you play like this!”
Bublik may have jokingly reduced Sinner's already tender age by four more years, but the point was made. Sinner is 19, but he plays like someone about to make it big on the big stage.
That the Italian is the most exciting young talent in tennis currently was reiterated at the ATP 1000 Miami Open, where he reached his maiden Masters final after beating higher seeded players in Karen Khachanov (second round) and Roberto Bautista Agut (semi-final). The 21st seed was gunning to become the youngest male champion in Miami but ran into an in-form Hubert Hurkacz on Sunday, the more experienced Polish beating Sinner 7-6(4), 6-4 for his own first Masters title at 24.
Despite not winning the trophy, Sinner shone in the marquee ATP Masters event deprived of star power this season with Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer all pulling out.
In the tournament’s 36-year history, Sinner became only the fourth teenager to reach the final. The others? Djokovic (2007), Nadal (2005) and Andre Agassi (1990).
Most everything Sinner does nowadays puts him in rarefied places: In February this year, he became the youngest man to win two ATP titles since Djokovic in 2006 after he added the ATP 250 Melbourne title to his maiden triumph in Sofia (also an ATP 250 event) last November.
Yet, it was a couple of months prior to that, at the autumnal 2020 French Open in Paris, that Sinner really gave a glimpse of why there's such a buzz around him. Ranked 75 in the world then, the 2019 Next Gen ATP Finals winner beat 7th-ranked Alexander Zverev to become the first Roland Garros debutant to enter the quarter-finals since Nadal in 2005. His last-eight opponent was the guy he emulated. For even the most seasoned of pros, going toe to toe with the Spaniard on clay is quite a tall order. But Sinner, then 18, did just that for the most part of two sets in their late-night encounter that lasted almost three hours.
The scoreline may have read 7-6(4), 6-4, 6-1 in Nadal's favour, but Sinner matched the 13-time French Open champion shot by shot from the baseline. In rallies of over nine shots through the match, the 6ft2 Italian won 33 points, four more than Nadal. That’s against a player who thrives on grinding down his rivals with a brutal baseline game. Sinner was serving for the first set and was a break up in the second before Nadal stepped up to take charge.
“For me it was difficult to pull him out of position,” Nadal said after the match. It’s usually what opponents have to say about Nadal on clay.
Nadal was stretched—arguably more than in the final against Novak Djokovic—by a teen who most experts believed wasn’t too far away from winning titles on the bigger stages of the professional tour. It didn’t take long for that prophecy to come true.
Such was the impression Sinner made on Nadal that the 20-time Grand Slam champion picked the Italian to be his training partner for the two-week quarantine ahead of this year’s Australian Open. Sinner spoke of the “big, big” lessons he learnt in those 14 days, none more important than “how to stay on court with the right mentality”.
That mentality has developed rather quickly after the age of 14, when Sinner switched to tennis full time from being a junior champion in giant slalom and joined Riccardo Piatti’s academy in Bordighera, a seaside town bordering France. His coach believes his skiing days helped develop a maturity that belies Sinner's age.
“If you ski or you make some race, you understand immediately that you need to be concentrated and if you make a mistake, you are out,” Piatti was quoted as saying by ATPtour.com. “In tennis, he was thinking that was the game. He liked tennis because he can make a mistake and then immediately come back and play again…”
It’s perhaps why one may rarely see Sinner throw a fit after a tough loss, or engage in over-the-top celebrations after a big win. The teenager's calm body language in that quarter-final against Nadal stood out as much as his all-round game and on-court movement.
On Monday, Sinner jumped to a career-high ATP ranking of world No. 23 with the Miami show, becoming only the second teen since 2010 to crack the top-25 in world rankings. After his semi-final win, he spoke about how a deep run in one week or one tournament doesn’t mean anything to him; “the road is long”, he said.
“I think it has been a good week anyway,” Sinner said on Sunday after the final defeat. “But obviously I'm not here for making finals. I'm here to win tournaments. Today was not my day, (I) accept that. But it's going back to work.”
Yes, Sinner is just 15...no...19.
