Jannik Sinner Enacts His Revenge On Carlos Alcaraz And Wins His First Ever Wimbledon Title
Today was Jannik Sinner's day. He took care of business in four sets to win his first Wimbledon title as well as his fourth career slam. His win-less streak against Carlos Alcaraz is over. The demons that have haunted him since last month's French Open are now vanquished.
Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are by far the two best players in the game right now. A good way to sum them up is that Alcaraz peaks higher than Sinner, but Jannik is way more stable. His consistency has his ranking at the top of the sport, pretty much unbeatable to the rest of the tour. You won't see his level fluctuate much throughout a match, if at all. While Alcaraz can look legitimately unplayable at times, he tends to experience drop-offs and hiccups more than you'd like.
Carlos turned around the first set in the blink of an eye. He raised his game and ripped it away from Jannik, capping it off with this incredible set point.
What followed that can best sum up their games. Alcaraz started off the second set with a super sloppy service game, gifting the early lead to Jannik, and really from that point on Sinner never looked back. For the next two sets he would only generate one break point chance. On the flip side Carlos' first serve percentage fell off a cliff. Sure he out-aced Sinner 15-7, but you can't win with a 52% first serve percentage. Sinner went into lockdown mode and Carlos was not good enough to match him.
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The only time that things began to turn and make you think Carlos could recreate the French Open magic was in the 4th set, down a break 3-4, but forcing the issue at 15-40 on Sinner's serve. He was even smiling for the first time since the opening set, borderline salivating. The crowd was just begging to explode and root for the comeback, but Sinner didn't give an inch this time. Everything bad that happened in Paris with his mental game was erased right there. I don't know how you mentally recover that quickly to play like he did today, but that's why I'm typing on my computer and he's winning Wimbledon.
Sometimes you just don't have it and for Carlos Alcaraz that was the case today. Sinner wins Wimbledon and closes back within one career slam title of Alcaraz. The career slam is also now very much in sight with only the French remaining. Alcaraz still has to figure out how to make a final at the Aussie. At the end of the day Sinner's win today is great for their rivalry. A Carlos win today would have made everything lopsided. Now Sinner is right there as we turn our attention to the North American summer hard court season. A US Open Final between these two would be spectacular, but honestly at this point it's kinda expected with how much better these guys are than everyone else.
P.S. With the roof closed I think Sinner would have came back against Dimitrov in the round of 16, but a good "what if" is certainly what would have happened had Grigor not torn his pec up two sets to love on Sinner.