The Spectacular Age of Sincaraz Has Arrived

Over the last 20 or so years, tennis fans have been spoiled with at least a dozen marathon Grand Slam finals that qualify for the sport’s pantheon. So many, in fact, that it’s become strangely customary for Sunday morning championships to stretch well into the afternoon, to feel as though the game, on something like a semi-regular basis, was being pushed to its physical and tactical limits. This, I suppose, is what it’s like living in a golden age. But on Sunday afternoon, as Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner traded blows in an unthinkably suspenseful and ultimately watershed French Open final, tennis may have been pushed further yet.

Among those of us who remember the seismic 2008 Wimbledon final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, or the Spaniard’s five-hour-and-53-minute epic against Novak Djokovic in Australia four years later, there might have been some measure of resistance to the new guard, led by two men born in the new millennium and thrust not long after into the kinds of superlative debates with which we sports junkies like to bide our time. But a match like the one we witnessed in Paris on Sunday is not an occasion for nostalgia. Watching Alcaraz and Sinner’s monumental battle of wills felt more like an anointment, the substantiation of a rivalry between two freaks of nature who’ve proven themselves more than worthy successors to the tennis papacy. This was something like a conclave.

To recap briefly, in the manner of Grand Slam trophy ceremonies — the sort of compulsory rite that never seems more awkward and inadequate than it does after matches like this one — let’s start with Sinner, who at 23 years old might already be the best pure ball-striker the sport has ever seen. The world number one and winner of the last two Majors imposed his will for most of the first two sets, swinging freely and powerfully through a slow clay court that isn’t typically rewarding to bombs-away sluggers who hug the baseline. But generational talents tend to figure out how to win on any surface, and in many different ways. So the Italian, riding a 20-match winning streak in Grand Slams, looked poised to capture his first title at Roland-Garros in relatively routine fashion, holding three championship points in the fourth set before getting the chance to serve out the match himself.

Then came Carlos Alcaraz, a showman so preternaturally gifted that he sometimes appears to have almost too many clubs in his bag, unsure when to use his driver or his wedge. Perhaps there’s no better testament to his greatness than the way that Alcaraz, previously flustered and out of rhythm (there was even a chunk of clay in his eyes at one point), began to marshal all his considerable talents when he was backed into a corner, sometimes literally: drop shots and touch volleys; forehands that exploded with shape, spin, and power; wrist-flicking passing shots and timely kick serves that slipped just out of Sinner’s strike zone. Vamos-ing himself and the crowd back into the match, Alcaraz looked more than a little like Rafa, his Iberian forerunner. But the way he did it actually called to mind the creative and painterly tennis of Federer, for whom a court was often a canvas of marbled brushstrokes. That Alcaraz, after failing to serve out the match in the final set, would then reserve his most ridiculous stretch of play for the deciding tiebreaker, the match hurrying towards its sixth hour, was a fitting denouement: after all, Grand Slam titles are taken much more than they are given away.

If, like me, you’re experiencing the kind of emotional hangover that often follows the psychodrama of a five-set Slam final, it might help to remember that neither of these guys are old enough to legally rent a car. At one and two in the world, positions they’ll probably trade for the next decade if they remain healthy and motivated, Sinner and Alcaraz are the new gold standard, having now won the last six Majors and put quite a bit of distance between themselves and their peers. On Sunday, they played for five and a half hours without bathroom breaks or medical timeouts, each of them conceding errant line calls that favored them and moving unflaggingly past the ones that didn’t.

Back in 2023, when Alcaraz triumphed over Djokovic in the Wimbledon final and Sinner first reached the ATP top five, the tennis commentariat began to speculate about just how many Major titles these two might win. Could they reach double digits, perhaps, or even 20-plus, like each member of the Big Three? I’ll admit that I found much of this discourse hyperbolic if not entirely premature. In fact, it seemed inauspicious that there was no manner of discussing Alcaraz and Sinner’s abundant talents that didn’t reflexively position them as the heirs apparent to a trio that lifted the sport to unprecedented heights of virtuosity and recognition.

Now, however, those comparisons seem somewhat less far-fetched, due in no small part to the fact that Sinner and Alcaraz have developed a genuine rivalry of their own, the kind that will compel each of them to further develop their games, just as the emergence of Djokovic in the late-aughts forced Federer and Nadal to improve and problem-solve, get faster and stronger. For now, Alcaraz has the edge with eight head-to-head wins to Sinner’s four, including each of the last five. But where the Spaniard remains subject to momentary lapses in concentration, Sinner is the safer bet on a week-to-week basis — dating back to August 2024, in fact, he hasn’t lost to anyone except Alacaraz.

And those who thought the Italian might be rattled by his three-month suspension earlier this year — he twice tested positive for the banned substance Clostebol, an over-the-counter healing spray that Sinner and his team insist wasn’t used knowingly — were proven wrong. Upon returning to the tour last month, he immediately reached two finals, making quick work of his opponents before losing to Alcaraz in Rome and Paris. In doing so, he looked every bit as formidable as he did when he was supposedly doping and quieted any murmurs about previous performance enhancement.

As the tour heads to the grass courts of England, and then to North America for the hard court swing, there’s Alcaraz, Sinner, and everybody else. No one looks remotely close to challenging the New Two in a best-of-five match, save a last gasp from the 38-year-old Djokovic as he pursues a record-setting 25th Slam. Meanwhile, a whole generation of hopefuls born in the 1990s, players who patiently waited their turn after a 15-year run of Big Three hegemony, has been subdued, with just two Major titles among them: one for Daniil Medvedev and one for the now-retired Dominic Thiem. But if history is any indication, greatness benefits the sport more than a level playing field. Indeed, their maiden Major final was the most-watched French Open final since 2021 (and one imagines viewership steadily increased as word got around that history was unfolding). Like the Big Three before them, Sincaraz is the kind of rivalry that will strengthen not just the sport but one other: two class acts, possessed of clashing styles and comportments, meeting the game’s biggest occasions with acrobatic genius and fierce resolve. And what’s more? Wimbledon is only three weeks away. They may well run it back in July.