21 hours ago
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So how will our match today go? Sinner is favourite partly because he knows he can do it, 2-0 in finals relative to Zverev’s 0-2. But he also hits more consistently and, tough both shots have improved, Zverev can struggle on forehand and volley with Sinner good enough to target both. I expect the champ to sit on the baseline, plant feet if he can, and look to keep Zverev moving and guessing; Zverev will, I think, hope to draw him in, in order to hit passes.
Yesterday was a good day for this blog, part two: longtime and even occasional readers will know that the good stuff comes from Coach Calvin Betton. Well, Coach Calv and his charge, Henry Patten, along with Harri Heliovaara, have now added the men’s doubles Australian Open title to the one they won at Wimbledon earlier this year. Mazal tov!
I post this not just because she’s a favourite but because Zverev would do well to take heed: another player with a massive game but prone to collapse, who can’t quite deliver his best when he really needs to.
Maddy explains in more detail:
I absolutely love this:
I finally got to the point where I was OK if it didn’t happen,” she said. “I didn’t need it to feel I had a good career or that I deserved to be talked about as a great player. Finally letting go of that internal talk gave me the ability to go out and play some really good tennis to win a grand slam.”
I remember Andy Murray saying that after he lost the 2012 Wimbledon final to Roger Federer, he had to deal with the prospect of never winning a major. Two months later, he was Olympic champion and US Open champion.
Yesterday was a good day for this blog, one of our longtime favourites, Our Maddy, finally working out how to create the destiny she thought had escaped her.
Agreed. His serve and backhand are among the best shots in the game, but can Zverev continue to aggress if and when it gets tight? Sinner knows he can rely on himself to treat every point the same.
Preamble
A year ago, Jannik Sinner was just another promising talent, in the liminal zone as a player who may or may not win the big pots expected of him. And then he came from two sets down to beat Daniil Medvedev, enshrining him as a grand slam champion and changing the nature of his tennis overnight.
Since then, Sinner has played with a different authority. Relaxed by the fact that he has done it and secure in the certainty that he can do it, the difference is that between hoping and knowing: mentality and physicality have take his tennis to another plane, that no one can ever take away from him.
Alexander Zverev has existed in that liminal zone for some years now. In 2020, he lost the final of the US Open despite leading Dominc Thiem by two sets to love, then last year he led Carlos Alcaraz two sets to one in the final of the French Open, only to lose the last two sets 6-1 6-2.
And though he is not someone – like, say, your Mario Berrettnis and your Casper Ruuds of this world – who needs a whole host of things to go wrong for others in order to win – but at 27, he’ll be wondering and rightly so. He is running out of time.
He knows that Novak Djokovic, injured here, looks good for at least another year. He knows that Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, both multiple grand-slam champs, are only going to get better, and by several orders of magnitude. He knows that Learner Tien and João Fonseca are coming. He knows that if he does not make this his moment his, another might not come along soon, or ever. But he also knows that if he does, there is no reason for it to be his last, the difference that between everything and nothing. This is absolutely gargantuan.
Play: 7.30pm local, 8.30am GMT
