The 2023 tennis season ended with the victory of the Italian team in the Davis Cup. This is only the Italians’ second victory in the tournament and their first since 1976. And in many ways, this is a personal triumph for team leader Jannik Sinner. He won all five playoff matches: three singles and two doubles. In the final, a pair was simply not needed, since with the current Davis Cup format, each match amounts to two victories, and the doubles match is always the last, third, then you can win based on the results of two individual matches. , what has happened. If in the quarterfinals Matteo Arnaldi lost to Botik van de Zandshulp, and in the semifinals Lorenzo Musetti lost to Miomir Kecmanovic, in the final Arnaldi defeated Alexey Popyrin, which allowed Sinner to take the Davis Cup to his team after the individual match with Alex de Minaur.
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The decisive role in winning KD is not Yannick’s only significant achievement this season, in the second half of which he was especially good. Of course, the Cup was a great finale, with the victory over Novak Djokovic in the semi-final match being the real icing on the cake. Novak (like the Serbian team) had a triple match point on the opponent’s serve with a score of 5:4 in the decisive set, but the Italian managed to recover and finally took the game with a score of 7:5 . This is only the fourth time Djokovic has lost a fight on match point or match points, the third time he has missed more than one match point and the first time he has missed a triple match point. Previously, the Serbian lost by three match points to Mikhail Youzhny in Rotterdam 2007 and to Rafael Nadal in Madrid 2009, but there he did not have consecutive match points. So, at least in this sense, Sinner’s result was historic.
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“Rookie” of the year and stagnation in 2022
Yannick has been a rising tennis star for years. Back in 2019, Sinner, who turned 18 during that season, won the Youth Championship Final in Milan, replacing Stefanos Tsitsipas as his winner (the next winner of the tournament held in 2021 was Carlos Alcaraz), entered the top 100 and received the ATP. Rookie of the Year Award. Of course, the junior final is a semi-exhibition tournament with specific rules, but it is still a nice achievement for a young tennis player. By the way, it was in the final of that championship where Sinner faced Alex de Minaur for the first time, and Yannick obtained his last and sixth victory over him in six matches played, in the Davis Cup final.
Sinner Jannik
Photo: Getty Images
Throughout these seasons (as of 2020), Sinner has certainly progressed. His game became more balanced and dangerous for his opponents, he rose in the rankings, but at the same time he lacked any progress. Yannick, who debuted in the top 10 at the end of 2021, has completely stalled in his progress. Injuries were partly to blame and lack of physical preparation was an obstacle. At the Slams, where the main ranking points are played, he performed quite consistently, but it was the stability of the level of Andrei Rublev, no offense to the Russian, and not Novak Djokovic, that is, the quarterfinals and nothing further. . There was also an element of bad luck. Thus, at Wimbledon 2022, Sinner lost the quarterfinals to Djokovic, although he led 2-0 in sets, and in a similar phase of that year’s US Open he did not take advantage of a single match point in the fourth game with Alcaraz. As a result, both Novak and Carlos became champions of those tournaments.
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Darren Cahill’s main contributions
By the way, Sinner is one of the most difficult rivals for Alcaraz. For the first time, Yannick beat him on the Wimbledon grass in 2022, and the overall head-to-head score is currently tied, 4-4. At the same time, the last two fights were with the Italian, who defeated Carlos on hard courts in Miami and Beijing. And if in the spring, during the Miami Masters, Yannick had not yet made his breakthrough – he had just returned to the top 10 after leaving there in 2022 – in the fall, when the tournament was held in the capital of China, it was already completely another sinner.
Trying to pinpoint a specific turning point in the season can be a challenge, but things have definitely improved for Yannick since July. Interestingly, it had been exactly a year since Sinner began working with Darren Cahill. This experienced mentor has previously trained tennis stars such as Lleyton Hewitt, Andre Agassi, Andy Murray, Ana Ivanovic and Simona Halep, and I only listed those who rose to the first line of the rankings and won Grand Slam tournaments. Cahill replaced Riccardo Piatti, with whom Sinner had broken up shortly before. Piatti is best known for his work with Djokovic, and also coached Ivan Ljubicic, Milos Raonic and Richard Gasquet.
The first Masters title and a turning point in the confrontation with Medvedev
Under Cahill, Sinner improved in many aspects, especially the physics and sharpness of the game. Yannick has improved a lot in enduring long matches and, what is also very important, in recovering from them, and his deep shots and serves have become more dangerous and faster. And the results, and with them a strong qualitative rise in the classification, began to arrive one after another. The semifinals of Wimbledon, the first title of his career at the Masters (in Toronto), then a relegation with the defeat at the beginning of Cincinnati and in the round of 16 of the US Open, but then the Italian had an excellent autumn, losing only two games in six tournaments.
Sinner Jannik
Photo: Getty Images
What prevents us from calling the autumn ideal is the fact that Sinner did not win a single major personal trophy. However, Yannick did something that couldn’t help but anger Russian tennis fans: overcome the “Medvedev curse.” Daniil beat him 6-0 in head-to-head matches, including two finals in the first part of this season, but when the time came for the leaves to fall to the ground, the Italian found the Russian’s keys. After adding quite frequent and successful runs to the net to strengthen his serve, Yannick stopped giving Daniil easy counterattack chances and started achieving victories with excellent play in decisive moments. Sinner won titles in Beijing and Vienna with final victories over Medvedev, and then cemented his success in the semi-finals of the Final Championship.
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As for the result of major tournaments, in Shanghai Yannick could not cope with Ben Shelton in the round of 16, in Paris he simply did not enter the match with his “client” Minaur after the very late completion of the opening match ( almost three in the morning local time) – the organizers thought of putting their match with Alex in the middle of the next day, about 12 hours after the end of the previous meeting. Well, in the final at home, Sinner could not cope with Djokovic in the final, whom he had previously defeated in the group stage and could have been eliminated from the tournament, but he deliberately did not lose to Holger Rune and left the Serbian in the game.
Be that as it may, these results were more than enough to rise to fourth place in the ranking and consolidate there. If in Shanghai Yannick was almost surpassed by Andrei Rublev, who needed to defeat Hubert Hurkacz in the final (the Russian lost in the third set tiebreaker), at the end of the season Sinner and Rublev were separated by more than 1,500 points. At the same time, the Italian is 1,110 points behind Medvedev, so at the beginning of the next season Daniil will have to defend his positions in the ranking from Yannick’s invasions. And reaching the top 3 is already a very serious level.
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Yannick’s bright prospects
At the same time, in the future, Sinner will be able to compete for the first place. Of course, a lot here will depend on the helmets. If Djokovic performs roughly the same as this year (three titles and a final), it will be very difficult to challenge him. But, by the way, Yannick himself, with this rate of progress, is quite capable of winning a major. If you try to guess a little, since last year I think his best chances are at Wimbledon. Of course, you can also qualify for hard Slams, but on this surface practically all the best players can show their best tennis, but on grass only Djokovic and Alcaraz can do it. Medvedev, Rublev, Zverev, Rune, Tsitsipas, Ruud – all of them, to one degree or another, look worse on grass than on other types of courts (and some practically do not know how to play there, at least for now). ).
In the 2023 season, Sinner proved that he has the right to be called the top young tennis star after Alcaraz. Next year it will be interesting to follow the continuation of his confrontations with Medvedev, Djokovic and, of course, Carlos, and continue to advance himself. And if the titles in the “Helmets” and the first line of the ranking bypass Yannick for now, he will surely achieve both throughout his career. Perhaps only serious injuries can stop the Italian.
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS