New US Open champion Jannik Sinner is making huge strides in a short period of time.
And that, he believes, bodes well for what is to come.
At just 23, Sinner already reached No. 1 in the ATP rankings a few months ago and, on Sunday, he collected the second Grand Slam trophy of his career – and of the year – by defeating Taylor Fritz 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 in the final at Flushing Meadows.
Add to that the Australian Open championship he won in January and Sinner is the first man since Guillermo Vilas in 1977 to win the No. 1 and No. 2 major titles in the same season.
“I’ve been through a lot of things quickly,” said Sinner, the second Italian singles US Open winner, who joins 2015 women’s champion Flavia Pennetta. “I’m still young. That gives me confidence that I can still improve, because at 23, you haven’t perfected everything. So my team and I know we have to improve.”
In what aspects? He pointed out the match against Fritz.
“I played well from the backcourt today. I felt good there,” said Sinner, who was cleared in a doping case the week before the start of the tournament in New York. “But could I do more? Yes. Could I serve better? Absolutely.”
That aspect of his game is considered a relative weakness, but look at this statistic: Sinner won 88% of points when his first serve came in.
What Sinner did best on Sunday is what he does as well as anyone else right now: control the baseline, using his instincts and considerable wingspan to get to almost every ball and hit it with great force. He’s also an elite returner: Fritz had lost just nine of 107 service games in 22 sets before Sinner broke him three times in the first set alone and a half-dozen times in all.
“You have to give Jannik credit for that. He returned serves well in some of the important moments and he got some serves back that a lot of players don’t get back,” said Michael Russell, Fritz’s coach. “He creates a lot of unique challenges because he’s so dangerous on both sides, both on the forehand and backhand, and he also moves very well.”
Fritz, the first American in a major singles final in 15 years, had played Sinner twice before, both times in Indian Wells, California, winning in 2021 and losing in 2023. Fritz said Sinner’s biggest areas for improvement are his movement and his serve.
“In my head I know I’m not perfect and I never will be, but we always try to evolve,” Sinner said. “After my career, I can say, ‘Okay, I did everything I could to be 100 percent. ’”
When Fritz tried to resort to what he called “Plan B” on Sunday, opting to keep balls in play longer rather than looking for winners early in rallies, he said, Sinner managed to “bully me a little bit too much.”
And it’s not as if Sinner is only capable of doing these things on hard courts like those used at Melbourne Park and Flushing Meadows. He has been a semi-finalist on the clay of the French Open and on the grass of Wimbledon.
The self-confidence he gained at the Australian Open — beating 10-time champion Novak Djokovic in the semifinals and then defeating 2021 US Open champion Daniil Medvedev for the championship after being two sets down — was also important.
She said the title was “kind of a relief” because “you never know if you can win a Grand Slam or not, but when you win one, you know you can.”
The U.S. Open was different, Sinner said, both because of the elevated pressure and what he called “pre-tournament circumstances.”
He called it “quite surprising” to end up with a pair of Grand Slams in 2024, which is a fair assessment, especially considering 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic, 37, is still with us, and Carlos Alcaraz, 21, is proving he is elite.
This season could be seen as a transfer of power from the generation of Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal — a trio with 66 Grand Slam trophies — to the Big Two of Alcaraz and Sinner.
The young duo shared the four top prizes in men’s tennis, marking the first time since 2002 that no member of the Big Three won at least one.
“It’s a little bit different, for sure. I mean, it’s something new, but it’s also nice to see,” Sinner said. “It’s nice to see new champions. It’s nice to see new rivalries.”
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Howard Fendrich has been AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Find his articles here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich
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