Jannik Sinner Reinstates The Regime

After losing the 2025 Australian Open final, Sascha Zverev was remarkably despondent.

The man who defeated him, Jannik Sinner, put both hands on Zverev's shoulders and https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tu9bEIXvUKg">delivered a pep talk to the sobbing runner-up as the duo awaited the presentation of their trophies. "I think Jannik is better than me at the moment.

It's as simple as that," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnqFDy-ymw0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnqFDy-ymw0">Zverev said in his post-match press conference. "I think I'm serving better than him, but that's it.

He does everything else better than me.

He moves better than me, he hits his forehand better than me, he hits his backhand better than me, he returns better than me, he volleys better than me."

Many players suffer emotionally after losing a Slam final, and for Zverev it was his third time in that unpleasant scenario, but I couldn't remember the last time I'd ever seen a tennis player sound quite so hopeless.

Once a teenage prodigy, Zverev had endured the Big Three era only to be leapfrogged by Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.

They beat him regularly, scooped up all the Slam titles that Zverev sought, enthralled fans, and played with the kind of relentless aggression that seemed to consistently elude Zverev in the nervy moments of a big match.

At one point in April, the ranking points gap between No. 2 Alcaraz and No. 3 Zverev was larger than the gap between No. 3 Zverev and me.

Nobody would dispute Zverev's claim that Sinner was a world apart from him.

Frustration mounted, and late in the 2025 season, Zverev https://www.reuters.com/sports/tennis/zverev-accuses-tournaments-slowing-courts-favour-alcaraz-sinner-2025-10-04/">even speculated that tournament directors were tweaking their court surfaces to favor the Sincaraz duo.

He has never been one for subtle grievance.

Zverev turned 29 this April and must have felt he was running out of time.

After all that heart- and bellyaching, this year Zverev lucked into a Roland-Garros draw unclogged of the tour's three most dangerous players: Sinner (https://defector.com/jannik-sinner-gets-too-close-to-the-sun-falls-early-in-french-open">shock loss due to cramps), Alcaraz (wrist injury) and Novak Djokovic (https://defector.com/joao-fonseca-has-created-more-chaos-at-the-french-open">upset by rising star).

It was in these somewhat Mickey Mouse circumstances that Zverev, the best of the rest, won his long-awaited first Slam.

With that achievement under his belt, a few weeks later he rolled up to Wimbledon, advanced past the fourth round for the first time at the grass-court major, arrived at the final, won the first set in a tiebreak ... and still proceeded to lose to Jannik Sinner, 6-7(7), 7-6(2), 6-4, 6-4, on Sunday.

We can grant that Zverev has made appreciable strides, with regard to his forehand and his execution under stress.

He still can't yet threaten the regnant duo in men's tennis.

This was Sinner's tenth consecutive win over Zverev.

Like many a Wimbledon match between top-ranked men, this final was characterized by quick points and serve dominance.

These are two of the best serves on tour, though the players come by it differently.

Zverev, at 6-foot-6, has the stereotypical stature of a flamethrower.

The distinctive feature of his serve is his ability to maintain high heat while still getting the bulk of first serves into play.

Over the last 52 weeks he's gotten a tour-best 72.5 percent of first serves in, which is outrageous considering how hard he's hitting them.

Meanwhile, Sinner, who is three inches shorter and has continually tinkered with his service motion over the past few years, has devised one of the most accurate deliveries on tour.

He first serves stay perilously close to the lines of the service box, https://x.com/mattracquet/status/2076387091328455042">best visualized in this graphic by Matt Willis, and these days he can crank it up to 130 mph with some regularity.

Back in 2022, his serve was mediocre, and he had to really toil from the baseline.

By 2024, his serve was excellent.

In 2026, it might be heading to historically good territory.

Once a groundstroke merchant, Sinner is now inching towards servebothood.

That's a joke, mostly, but the serve has indeed solved patches of the season when his baseline game has looked scraggly.

That includes the first few rounds of this Wimbledon run, too, including his mystifying five-setter against Miomir Kecmanovic in the first round.

The typically unshakable Sinner forehand has faltered.

But when all aspects of his game are humming, as they were in the last stretch of Sunday's final, he is impossible to cope with.

I agree with Willis's claim that we've never quite seen this quality of serve fused to this quality of ball-striking.

That unholy combination will win him many titles on fast surfaces, and it is exactly what bedeviled Zverev today.

Both players were unbroken in the first two sets, which they split in tiebreaks.

It took Zverev 2 hours and 42 minutes to locate his first (and only) break point, which arrived in at 3-3 in the third set.

On that pivotal point, Sinner came up with a drop shot that caused Zverev to slip, fall, and clutch at his knee; he walked across the court to help his opponent up from the turf.

Sinner then held serve, got the first break of the entire match, and served out the third set.