Not since Marco Polo in the Middle Ages has an Italian got so much out of China as Jannik Sinner has in the past 12 months. If winning in Beijing in 2023 was arguably the making of Sinner as an elite-level competitor, then winning in Shanghai in 2024 proved that he is now the dominant player in men’s tennis, especially week to week on the ATP Tour. If Carlos Alcaraz perhaps remains capable of attaining greater heights as a tennis player, then Sinner has already proven that he is capable of attaining far greater consistency, such that with nearly six weeks of the season to go he is already confirmed as the year-end World No.1.
The Nature of the Asian Swing
The Asian Swing, as the autumnal suite of tournaments in Japan, South Korea, and particularly China has come to be known, is often overlooked by casual tennis fans, especially those outside Asia itself. The time difference between Asia and Europe/North America, where most of the ATP Tour takes place, obviously makes it difficult for those fans to keep up with the action in Asia, so much so that it can almost feel like an afterthought or even an irrelevance at the end of the year’s four Majors. Yet in reality this part of the tour is often the best barometer for the season ahead, showing how things can change radically from one season to the next.
Sinner himself is the best example of that. Last season, he arrived in China after a generally disappointing summer in 2023. He had won his maiden Masters tournament in Canada, but he had also suffered fairly disappointing exits at three Grand Slam tournaments in succession: going out in the second round of the French Open to Daniel Altmaier after being two sets to one up; reaching the semifinal at Wimbledon, but losing limply to Novak Djokovic; and finally losing in the fourth round of the US Open to Alexander Zverev, albeit after five hard-fought sets.
It is safe to say that nobody then would have predicted that Sinner would proceed to go on one of the all-time great winning streaks on the ATP Tour. And yet his 2023 Beijing win, which included a semifinal dismantling of Carlos Alcaraz and a first ever win over Daniil Medvedev in the final, propelled him to a spectacular end of the season, culminating in his leading Italy to only their second ever Davis Cup win and in the process defeating Djokovic twice in one day in the semifinal, in both singles and doubles.
Of course Sinner has not only maintained that stunning post-Shanghai 2023 form in 2024 but enhanced it dramatically. His figures for this calendar year are truly extraordinary, encompassing his first two Major wins in Melbourne and New York, which have undoubtedly established him as the best male hardcourt player in the world, and a total win-loss record in the year so far of 65-6, or over 90%. If John McEnroe’s remarkable 82-3, or 96.5%, record of 1984 is unlikely ever to be matched let alone exceeded (and not even The Big Three could get close to it, partly because of their endless competition with each other), Sinner’s 2024 record so far, 40 years on from McEnroe’s annus mirabilis, is still incredible.
Sinner’s Dominance Of Djokovic
There is one particular Sinner statistic from the last year or so that is perhaps even more impressive than all the rest, namely his recent dominance of Djokovic. He has now won four of his last five matches against the statistical GOAT and five out of the last six if the doubles in last year’s Davis Cup semifinal is included.
That is a staggering record against the great Serb, whose trademark throughout his career and especially throughout his last decade or more of domination has been a near pathological inability to lose to the same player twice. Even the mercurial Alcaraz has been unable to establish the same kind of dominance over Djokovic that Sinner has. The Spanish prodigy may have beaten Djokovic in the last two Wimbledon finals (the first time after an epic contest and the second time comprehensively). However, on both occasions he has effectively been reeled back in by Djokovic almost immediately afterwards, first in the 2023 Cincinnati Masters final and then in this year’s Olympic Men’s Singles final. Consequently, the feeling persists that Djokovic can still fully compete with and even beat Alcaraz, especially over three sets.
The reverse is now true of Sinner v Djokovic contests, as the 2024 Shanghai Masters final demonstrated. Djokovic had gone into it in the best form he had shown since the Olympics, especially in his semifinal victory over Taylor Fritz, during which he had shown more than enough, especially with one particularly impressive backhand sliding return, to suggest that he was getting back to somewhere near his best.
The evidence of the 2024 Shanghai final, however, is that Djokovic may never be able to get back to his best, especially against Sinner at his best. The first set was hard-fought and went to a tie-break, but Sinner took control of it immediately to go 3-0 up and then resisted the inevitable Djokovic fightback to see it out 7-4. And in the second set, he broke early on before holding his serve with relative ease to win 6-3.
Perhaps more than in any other match in recent years, even those against Alcaraz at Wimbledon, Djokovic was made to look his age by Sinner in Shanghai. He will be 38 in May and having been comprehensively defeated by Sinner in the Australian Open semifinal last January, it is hard to see him being able to beat the Italian again over five sets in the future, or perhaps even over just three sets.
Jannik Sinner Is The New King of Consistency
Just like Alcaraz, Sinner is the ultimate post-Big Three player, in that he has learned from Djokovic, Nadal and Federer that a truly great tennis player must be a truly complete tennis player, one capable of playing almost all styles on all surfaces. Indeed, post-Big Three it is virtually impossible to imagine a less than fully complete male tennis player, as even some greats of the past such as Borg at the US Open or Sampras on clay were, winning a Major.
What has set Sinner apart from Alcaraz so far, and matching it is probably the biggest challenge that Alcaraz faces in his still nascent career, is that he has been able to maintain a far greater degree of consistency on tour than Alcaraz has. Alcaraz is the more explosive player of the two, who is perhaps capable of producing an even higher top level or ceiling of tennis than Sinner, as he demonstrated in the 2024 Beijing final, where he just defeated Sinner in the final set tie-break by coming from 3-0 down to win 7-3.
However, Sinner’s floor or baseline level of play may just be higher than that of Alcaraz, as he has proven throughout 2024 and in the Asian Swing in particular. Sinner may have been disappointed to have lost to Alcaraz in the Beijing final and for the third time in succession in 2024. However, by winning again immediately in Shanghai after Alcaraz had lost in the quarterfinal, he showed that he may lose some battles against the Spaniard but overall is winning the war.
As has been discussed extensively in recent months, especially after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed against the decision by the tennis authorities not to ban Sinner for failing two drugs tests earlier this year, it is perhaps only a long-term ban from playing, which would surely be imposed if WADA’s appeal succeeds, that can stop Jannik Sinner from being the men’s World No.1 for the foreseeable future. He dominates Djokovic, is more consistent than Alcaraz, and on and off the court has shown that he has a truly steely mindset that might just set him apart from every other current player.
Main Photo Credit: Mike Frey-USA TODAY Sports
