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Email from yesterday, via Joel Smith: “I am so disappointed, and frankly angry, at Sabalenka’s extremely ungracious runner up speech at Roland Garros!! So disrespectful to Coco and the occasion.
This is on the heels of Sabalenka smashing her racquets at the Aussie Open after losing to Madison Keys, which was totally unacceptable. Imagine if Serena or Coco behaved this poorly, they’d be castigated as a sore loser so, I hope the press and tennis community doesn’t give Sabalenka a free pass!
Sabalenka acting like she was entitled to this title is so unbecoming and although I like her personality, she about to lose me as a supporter. How dare she ran on this classy young lady’s win.”
I dunno. I know what you mean but I appreciated her honesty – when I watch sport, I want a window into people’s souls a lot more than I want anodyne platitudes. Sabalenka was hurting bad and she told us why and how she planned to handle it; I must prefer that to a taking the positives glib-fest, much as I love and respect Gauff.
TNT have Mac and Chrissy in the studio. You know what? Loz the match, let’s just listen to those two talk tennis for the rest of the afternoon. I’m the right age for this, but imagine being that gifted with a racket in hand, and also this funny, kind, insightful and charismatic.
It’s hard to argue with that isn’t it? And yet I’d still like to have seen better performances from Alcaraz over the fortnight, who was in trouble against Musetti for the best part of two sets. He plays like that today, it’s not close … and yet he’s so good at hitting whatever level he requires to win. Moreover, his win in Rome came in Sinner’s first match tournament back after his drug ban; he’s fitter, sharper and more confident now. Oh man, what a contest we’re in for.
I know we don’t know who’s going to win but … who’s going to win? I’ve been leaning Sinner because his game has the fewer moving parts and he’s in the better form. But Coach Calv, our resident expert, knows plenty more than me ands is backing Alcaraz: “He’s won their last four meetings, won on this court last year, and has a bit more to his game: he moves better, volleys better, and has more change-up – drops, slices,. angles. The game could do with Sinner winning probably, can’t have a rivalry if it’s totally one-sided, though I guess people still talk about Keane-Vieira as a rivalry, even though it wasn’t.”
Preamble
Salut et bienvenue à Roland-Garros 2025 – 15e jour!
We’re all friends here so we can be honest with one another: our lives are predictable, the days passing slowly and the years zipping by in a sapping imposition of the almost-same. The world, so full of fantasy and wonder, so much of it inaccessible to us other than on special occasions.
Which is one place sport comes in. It isn’t always good, far from it, but it sustains us with the prospect of something good; the sense that we don’t know what’s going to happen.
Yet our last two weeks have been building to the inevitability of now. When the men’s tournament started two weeks ago, it felt almost impossible that the final would be between anyone other than Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz and that’s exactly what’s happened, Sinner reaching this stage without losing a set and Alcaraz also domineering.
But this is where that ends. We can reason for ourselves which of these two future greats is likely yo be celebrating later on, but we cannot know: these are two supreme and supremely well-matched tennisers. Sinner has the edge in consistency and mentality, Alcaraz in mobility and creativity; Sinner has the higher modal level, Alcaraz the higher top level; Sinner hasn’t lost in 20 grand slam matches and has won 47 of his last 49 matches, but his two defeats came against Alcaraz, the defending champion, who beat him handily on clay just three weeks ago.
Nor is today solely about today. Though this is the pair’s first grand slam final meeting, even now, it seems inconceivable they won’t beat the record of nine heads-to-head held by Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Which is to say we are not just about to enjoy something of guaranteed quality, but the start of one of the great sporting rivalries, there to enrich our lacking lives for the next decade and more.
And in making it about ourselves, we can of course do more than just enjoy it, its protagonists believable archetypes and unique presences in whom we can easily see our reflections. Are we reliable, calm and introverted like Sinner, excitable and improvisational gamblers like Alcaraz … or does one represent how we see ourselves, the other how we’d like to see ourselves?
They are here, we are here, everything is here; this is going to be epochal. On y va!
Play: 3pm local, 2pm BST.
