2 months ago
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“SinAraz or AlcaSin, says Mohammad Feroze. “SinAraz sounds like a prison and AlcaSin sounds like a medicine.”
SinCaraz?
For my part, I’d back Alcaraz on the surfaces that move underfoot – grass and clay – and Sinner on more predictable hards. But there’s so little between them that whoever plays closer to their best is likely to be the determining factor and, given his game has less about it that can go wrong, it’s tempting to fancy Sinner. But it’s hard to back Alcaraz to lose a major final when he’s won five from five; if he gets in front, he’ll be very difficult to stop, and if he’s behind, there’s always the sense he can come back.
Back to our match, Coach Calv Betton messages in wiIth his breakdown: “It’s not a tactical battle between those two, it’s ball striking. They’ll both try and hit the ball hard. There isn’t much nuance. Occasionally, they’ll both do something different to mix it up – a drop shot, a serve-volley. And someone will make out that it’s a pre-planned strategy to break the other guy down. It’s not. It will just be random and nothing’s really changed since the French Open so I don’t see it playing out differently.”
We’re scheduled to get going at 4pm, but on court currently we’ve the women’s doubles final; Ostapenko and Hsieh lead Kudermetova and Mertens 4-2 in the third.
Email! “The rivalry to rival Fedal – now we have SinAraz or AlcaSin. Hopefully these two will give us a banger of a five-setter. Too close to call but I’ve a feeling Carlos will hit the hat-trick of SW19 wins This could be emotional and physical carnage for the players and fans. Enjoy it.”
It’s funny isn’t it – these two have only played one major final against each other, yet no one could say with any certainty when there might next be one they’re not in. The difference between them and the rest is monumental, the difference between them is marginal.
Also going on:
Preamble
We all lie to ourselves all the time, inventing stories to make ourselves look better or look worse, feel better or feel worse; to explain the haphazard chaos we call life.
Sportsfolk, though, have turned this routine into an art. How else could they perform fine motor skills, under pressure and exhausted, in front of a crowd offering feedback in real time?
Consequently, when we hear Jannik Sinner say he’s over losing the French Open final, from two sets and three match-points up, we can sort of believe him. As the psychological axiom has it – an antidote to so many of the grudges, injustices and disappointments we let needlessly weigh us down – “that was then and this is now.”
But as Sinner prepares to meet Carlos Alcaraz again, are we seriously to believe the scarring has no impact? That his first Wimbledon final, facing the man who crushed his dreams in Paris, is just another match, irrelevant to anything which precedes it?
Because what to us is narrative, to Sinner is pain – and a problem to be solved. Against everyone else, he’s dominating almost all of the time; against Alcaraz, he’s lost five times in a row. If the key to stopping him isn’t to be found in their previous contests, does it even exist?
Sinner will argue the answer lies with him, not with his opponent. The margins are thin, so if he can impose his considerable strengths at the crucial moments – if he can perform those fine motor skills, under pressure and exhausted – it shouldn’t matter what his opponent does.
This is a clever way of looking at the world – we have no control over others, so all we can really do is deliver the best of ourselves and hope for the best – all the more so when confronted by an arch improvisor like Alcaraz. Often, even he won’t know what he’s going to do until he’s done it so, rather than predict him, it makes more sense to rush, hamper and crowd him.
The problem Sinner has is there’s a fervency about Alcaraz that is almost religious. He has no sense of his own fallibility, convinced by the mystical power of his own talent and creativity – with good reason. He knows he can win Wimbledon, he knows he can beat Sinner on the biggest occasion and he knows he cannot lose a grand slam final; he knows he is Carlos Alcaraz, who makes the impossible possible. Which is, of course, a lie he tells himself, but it is a lie which is true; that was then and that is now.
Meantime, the rest of us can simply look forward to a match-up that is already one of the classics. The Roland Garros final was one of the greatest ever, in any sport, and nothing about these two, as individuals and as rivals, suggests they won’t invent another epic story to elevate the haphazard chaos we call life.
Play: 4pm BST
