Mumbai: When Carlos Alcaraz won his second Grand Slam of 2024, he’d become the youngest to win majors across all three surfaces, at a rate quicker than Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. When Jannik Sinner won his second Grand Slam of 2024, he’d captured his first two majors in the same season, something even Djokovic, Nadal and Federer could not manage.
These couple of standout achievements tell you everything about the shifting dynamics of men’s tennis in a season in which Djokovic did not win a single title on the professional tour for the first time since 2005 and Nadal will bid goodbye as a professional player this week.
Defined by a collective stranglehold of the Big Three, the nerve centre of men’s tennis for a large part of the last couple of decades has finally been replaced by a newer, younger power centre. And within that, a 23-year-old soft-spoken Italian is ruling the roost like few men have before.
Sinner’s ATP Finals triumph in Turin on Sunday was emblematic of the kind of season he’s had. He beat American Taylor Fritz 6-4, 6-4 in a no-frills, utterly dominant performance in the final of the year-ending tournament where his opponents — each of them established top 10 players, mind you — at times felt like there was “nothing you can really do”, as Fritz put it. Sinner did not drop more than four games in a set across any of his five matches, and did not lose a set (again, something even the Big Three can’t flaunt in their record-setting CVs).
This dreamy dominance goes back to the start of the season, or even to the back end of last year when Sinner won a couple of ATP titles and led Italy’s victory charge in the Davis Cup Finals. That was Sinner warming up as a newly inducted top five player. This is Sinner as a red-hot runaway world No. 1 after a season of sweeping two Grand Slams and six ATP titles while losing just six matches out of the 75 he’s played so far this year. None of those defeats came in straight sets, and in no tournament has he exited before reaching at least the quarter-finals.
All this, going through nights when he “didn’t sleep well”, as Sinner revealed after winning the ATP Finals. Sinner’s sublime season of surge was somewhat dragged down by a doping saga that engulfed him just before the start of the US Open and refuses to go away. The Italian had tested positive in two separate dope tests in March, the results of which were made public only months later even as he continued playing on the tour. The decision to clear him of wrongdoing has been challenged by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which seeks a two-year ban. The case will spill over to early next year when the Court of Arbitration for Sport is expected to arrive at a ruling.
All through, the youngster kept playing — and largely winning — as if it were business as usual. Except, it wasn’t. “I’ve kept on thinking about where we went wrong and what we could have done better,” Sinner said on Sunday about the doping saga that eventually saw him fire two members of his team. “I had days where I wasn’t feeling great.”
Through those days only one opponent has managed to beat him multiple times this season. He happens to be the other cog in this narrative-spinning wheel of men’s tennis. Alcaraz and Sinner couldn’t be more contrasting to each other as personalities and tennis players. One is fire, the other ice. One is flashy and funky, the other solid and sublime. One is an all-court artist, the other an all-season force.
Their rivalry will define men’s tennis over the next decade but as far as this year goes, the 21-year-old Spaniard has had the upper hand. Alcaraz has beaten Sinner in all their three meetings in 2024, including in a high-quality ATP Beijing final and a high-stakes French Open semi-final. Alcaraz went on to win in Paris, and then in London at Wimbledon as he split the Slams with Sinner.
Any player would take a season of two Slams and as many ATP titles, yet with Sinner setting the benchmark this year, Alcaraz would feel like he could step up (he’s also dropped to world No.3, for the record). Especially in the second half of the season when he tends to lose steam competing on faster and indoor hard courts. One can be sure, though, that the sport’s hottest rivalry will only pick up pace.
Speaking of rivalries, there was another one involving Sinner that pretty much went one way. Djokovic could not beat his younger opponent in their two official meetings this year (three including the Saudi exhibition). Djokovic could not win a single title on the tour this year. A first-ever Olympic gold in Paris was indeed exceptional and emotional for the Serbian 24-time Slam champion. But the 37-year-old flagbearer of the Big Three senses the winds of change, and would be eager to turn it around again next season.
For now, though, Sinner’s sublime sail and Alcaraz’s sensational spark are causing quite a flutter.
