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Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and the privilege of watching a French Open final that will change tennis
The marathon French Open final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner will help usher tennis into a new era of superstars.
At the highest level of sport, you can never say it doesn’t matter who wins on the night. Especially in tennis, where the gauntlet-like knockout structure is so demanding, so brutal, where losing equals failing, no second chances, one winner and one loser. In all the greatest matches scattered across tennis history, the stakes are of such a nature that winning or losing felt like a matter of life or death.
Something about Carlos Alcaraz vs Jannik Sinner at the French Open 2025 finals transcended this binary. At the end of their instantly legendary 5h 29m battle of wits on Court Phillipe Chartrier, it was the Spaniard Alcaraz who came out on top and lifted the famous Coupe des Mousquetaires, defending his title from last year. It was he who denied Sinner the chance to join him on four grand slam titles, snatching away three championship points for the Italian, and winning, already, his fifth.
And yet, despite this being the first grand slam final meeting between the new faces of men’s tennis, it truly feels like the quality of this match made the ultimate champion somewhat irrelevant – at least within that grand schematic of elite sports. Two men who went toe-to-toe with incredible tennis against the harshest conditions and under the most pressure, going back and forth and having an answer for everything the other threw at them.
Alcaraz ultimately had too much weaponry at his disposal, elevating his level of play to an extremely high standard where it felt like he had lightning sparkling from his fingertips in every rally. And that is what it took to beat this monstrous machine of a man across the net, Sinner having bulldozed his way through the rest of the draw, and for the first two sets here, Alcaraz as well.
Alcaraz’s ability to generate a comeback for the ages is only one part of what the story of this match will look like in tennis history books years down the line. That’s how good this magical, sensational, gladiatorial contest on clay was, that when looking back at this as a moment of time, it might just obscure the result. For tennis, it’s a blessing. For fans old and new, this was a once-in-a-lifetime privilege to watch the otherworldly creation of legend.
This year's Roland Garros began with Rafael Nadal, the 14-time French Open champion, being commemorated in a special ceremony, his footprint marking the Chartrier court he made his own. This ceremony at the start of the fortnight celebrated his incredible career, with his great rivals Federer, Djokovic, and Murray present to tip their caps to the recently-retired Spaniard. Nadal, Federer, and Murray have all already stepped away from the sport, and Djokovic keeps the flag flying, but at 38-years-old, it won’t be forever.
The impact of Alcaraz vs Sinner, Roland Garros '25
When that is the level of greatness that men’s tennis has said goodbye to in the last couple of years, it creates a vacuum that is larger than life and feels impossible to fill. What Alcaraz vs Sinner on Sunday night did is to occupy that vacuum with all of their being, creating tennis drama at a scale that promises that these two young men will bridge that generational gap, from the era of the big four to whatever comes next.
This was a classic match, a phenomenon within itself, that has received incredible engagement and interest worldwide. It is almost single-handedly set to introduce new fans to the sport, to open their eyes to all the beauty and the brilliance that is part of this game. This is why it matters that the spectacle of Alcaraz vs Sinner produced how it did: it took the two biggest talents in the sport, showcased all their genius and their fighting spirit from both sides of the net, and their remarkable sportsmanship and bonhomie with each other to boot.
They delivered on a promise that this is not only the golden future of tennis. This is the here and now, and these are two players who are ready to elevate this sport to a standard it hasn’t experienced before. The match that will come to define a new epoch.
