They were in a hurry, this group of young tennis stars, with no interest in waiting for their turn to take over the sport or respecting their elders.
On a warm Sunday night at Rod Laver Arena, 22-year-old rising star Jannik Sinner from Italy became the latest member of the “next generation” to win a Grand Slam title.
He rallied from two sets down to beat Daniil Medvedev 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 in one of the game’s ultimate showdowns. Won the Australian Open for the first time. In the process, he became the second player under the age of 23 in the Open era to win a Grand Slam final from two sets down, following Bjorn Borg (Roland Garros, 1974). He’s only the eighth person to do it.
“It’s the Happy Slam,” said Sinner, using the nickname Roger Federer gave the Australian Open when he was holding the big silver trophy. His thoughts then turned to the chefs and restaurant workers in the mountains of northeastern Italy who raised him — and who, he said, gave him the opportunity to choose sports and follow his dreams. “Where my parents live, the temperature in the morning is -20 degrees!”
Even better, he said, was running around the tennis courts in the Australian summer and becoming the youngest man to win the Australian Open since Djokovic in 2008.
Going into the final, Medvedev didn’t have much hope against Sinner, who had long been touted for greatness and whose speed and power seemed to come together at the right time. Medvedev has lost his past three games against Sinner. He was on the court for about 20 hours, including two five-set marathons, one of which ended at 3:40 a.m. in the first week. Sinner performed well in the draw, including a shocking semifinal victory over ten-time champion Novak Djokovic.
But Medvedev walked onto the court with a clear advantage. He’s been on this stage before. This is his third Australian Open final and his sixth Grand Slam title. This was Sinner’s first set, and in the first two sets, he’d been like this – his body language was tense, his movements were hesitant, his shots were hesitant, unlike what he’d done in the previous two weeks. Performance is exactly the same.
Sinner fought to hold on in the third set, taking advantage of a tired Medvedev to close the gap, live on Rod Laver Arena for the first time all night – and the screaming Italian in the crowd finally had something to scream about called. Suddenly, Medvedev looked like he was having a vision of the 2022 final, when he took a two-set lead over the irresistible tennis force, the surging Rafael Nadal.
Sunday night’s surge of sinners was another story.
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First, he stopped making mistakes on basic shots, especially the backhand, something Medvedev started testing in the first game and never stopped. He then began to score points hard on Medvedev’s serve, forcing Medvedev to further deplete his energy reserves, which were low at the start after two weeks of marathon play.
Then, with the score tied for the first time in nearly three hours, Sinner finally started firing the laser from the baseline, defeating six of his previous opponents, including arguably the greatest of all time.
Jannik Sinner appears in his first Grand Slam final (David Gray/AFP Getty Images)
The decisive break came in the sixth game of the fifth set, a pattern that had become all too familiar to Medvedev over the past hour. Sinner jumped on his weak second serve, pushed him back to the court, and two shots later hit a cross-court forehand that Medvedev could only watch as it sailed by.
Three games later, Sinner became the first Italian player in modern tennis history to win the Australian Open, finishing the match with a final forehand down the line, and as he watched the ball sail through the back of the court, he fell on his back. Medvedev became the first player to lose a two-set lead twice in a Grand Slam final.
“You fought until the end and you managed to raise your level,” Medvedev told Sinner after the match, which saw him lift the runner-up trophy for the third time. “It’s always painful to lose in the final, but losing in the final is probably better than losing before. I’m proud of myself and I will work harder next time.”
Daniil Medvedev is appearing in his sixth Grand Slam final, having lost five of them (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
For much of the past two years, 20-year-old Spanish rising star Carlos Alcaraz has dominated the conversation in the men’s tennis world as he lives up to expectations as the sport’s next big thing. But as Alcaraz surges to the top of the game to become the youngest world number one since the modern ranking system began in 2022, Sinner preaches the value of patience and process.
His time will come, he promises, but unlike Alcaraz, Alcaraz needs to improve step by step, methodically work his way deeper into the championship and learn how to compete on the sport’s biggest stage. Everyone is eager for him and Alcaraz to launch a new rivalry in the spirit of Federer-Nadal or Nadal-Djokovic.
Everything is in its time, he said. That time will likely come Sunday night, in part because while he watches the legends of the sport to see how they practice and prepare, he also gains belief from Alcaraz that he, too, can beat the best The player is okay, even though he is still young.
Very few things happen by chance in sports, especially when it comes to Grand Slam champions. Tennis is an individual sport, but countries sometimes produce waves of top players. A dozen years ago, Spain was the kingdom of tennis, winning four Davis Cups in eight years, the sport’s most important national event, with Nadal leading the way.
Italian tennis is in shambles, with few top players and a small talent pool. Around that time, the country’s tennis federation developed a plan to become the site of more junior and lower-level professional events. This allows Sinner, Lorenzo Musetti, Matteo Arnaldi and other league-backed players to gain experience playing at a high level without having to incur the cost of international travel.
“The support I’ve received has been amazing,” Sinner said.
Still, there’s no sure formula for creating a Grand Slam title, especially one who makes a different sound when he hits a tennis ball with his racquet, a sound that lets opponents know the ball is coming toward him fast.
Tennis has a very basic strategy that will be familiar to anyone who has played or watched the sport, even just a few times. Basically it comes down to standing on the baseline and hitting the ball into your opponent’s backhand over and over again until you can prove that your backhand is strong enough to withstand the pressure. At that stage, it can start to impose harsh penalties because the player knows what’s coming next.
This is Plan A. In Grand Slam finals, it usually doesn’t work that well because the best players in the world can handle almost any shot if they know what’s coming next, even if their backhand isn’t that great.
As far as Medvedev was concerned, this approach worked for a long time, with Sinner unable to cope with the rallies and the pressure of the moment. But with Medvedev serving at 5-1 in the second set, Sinner began to come alive. Sinner broke him and then nearly broke him again at 5-3 and believed he had a chance heading into the third set.
As Sinner returned, Darren Cahill, one of Sinner’s coaches, stood in his box yelling “He’s tired” and reminded Sinner to have a championship mentality.
“Once you get into the fourth and fifth set, it’s all about what’s going on inside you,” Cahill said.
Medvedev has something left but progress is coming quickly and he is desperate to avoid his fourth five-set match after spending more time on the court than almost anyone else in Grand Slam history, with cards Hill’s words were to “go to hell and back” to close the title gap to two points.
This was as close as he could get. Another young player in the game asked him to back down.
“You live in this movement,” Sinner said. “You don’t even realize how fast you’re moving.”
(Top photo: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
