It’s almost over. Three match points in a row. When Jannik Sinner looks set to triumph in the final of the French Open against Carlos Alcaraz, the Italian has no idea that it will be almost two hours before the national anthem for the winner. Worse still: it will be the anthem of Spain.
It’s France, it’s Paris. There has long been a football atmosphere in the “Philippe Chatrier“, the largest tennis stadium in Europe. Chants, raised fists, eruptions after every single point, heckling before the serve, the confident chair umpire Eva Asderaki has to repeatedly admonish the completely uninhibited crowd and ask for calm.
And even in the quiet it seems as if something is about to burst. 15,000 people are under full power. Jannik Sinner has three match points. It’s 6:4, 7:6, 4:6, 5:3 for him and now 0:40 with Alcaraz serving. Three times the chance to win the French Open with the next point. The tournament that up to this moment had been a single demonstration of power by the world number one. Not a single sentence was lost. Won three sets to zero. Just the day before yesterday, in the semifinals, he pulled the plug on the best of all time, Novak Djokovic. Djokovic then spoke admiringly about Sinner: “He’s playing the tennis of his life.“
The longest finale in history
The clock reads three hours and 44 minutes. Alcaraz taps the ball for perhaps the last serve. Sinner pulls his cap again, blows into his batting hand and goes down into his typical, slightly sideways return position. The crowd hardly wants to calm down in view of the approaching end. “S’il vous plait!” Then Alcaraz serves, driving Sinner far out with a short cross-played topspin forehand. Sinner could stay in the game with a safety shot, but safety shots are not on the card in this final. Every hit all or nothing. Sinner, as he has done and will do many times in this match, switches from distress to attack, his forehand sails too long, 15:40, nothing happens yet.
And then they come. When Jannik Sinner goes to his towel, he hears her. He needs to hear her. “Carlos! Carlos! Carlos!” The pack cheers on his opponent, the pack smells something. Carlos Alcaraz is still there and he is capable of anything. He, the man for the epic dramas, for the great battles. Especially on clay, like here in Roland-Garros. It can’t just end now. Especially since it’s the very first one Grand Slam-Final of the two best against each other. Alcaraz has already won four Grand Slam titles, Sinner three, but they have never faced each other in a final on one of the world’s four biggest tennis stages. On this sunny June afternoon, Paris experiences a finale that will go down in history. At five hours and 29 minutes, it will be the longest French Open final.
Mama Sinner at her wits’ end
Second match point, first serve Alcaraz, way out of bounds. Interjections, “s’il vous plait!” The second serve is a bit short, Sinner goes all out with the backhand – too long. That was the chance. The second match point is also gone. Sinner’s coach, the steadfast Darren Cahill, stands like a rock in the box, looks reassuringly into his protégé’s eyes and gives him an almost imperceptible nod. You have another one, boy, you do it. Siglinde Sinner, the mother, is sitting behind her, at her wits’ end. Jannik barely notices all of this, he looks down at the sand. How it’s probably rattling in his head now.
“Inside there’s a storm“, he confessed just a few days ago in a post-match interview, giving a rare insight into his inner life on the court. He, who always seems so cool and serene, plays like a precision machine that never gets out of balance. Not even the three-month doping ban seems to have caused any kind of damage. On the contrary, Sinner is in almost frightening form in Paris. He just made his comeback, four weeks ago, at the Masters in Rome, where like in Paris played on clay and where he advanced straight to the final with five wins. His opponent there was Carlos Alcaraz, the best player in the world on clay, and he was – still – too strong for him. But here and now he has match point number three.
Alcaraz gets the audience on his side
Sinner returns the serve outwards fantastically, directly to the feet of Alcaraz, who can only save himself with an emergency hit, the ball bounces in the middle, short and nice and high. Now it’s his. Sinner hits a forehand cross with full force, but Alcaraz, the athlete, slips outwards and brings the ball back, again in the middle, but this time much longer. Sinner has to take a step back behind the baseline and hammers the next forehand. What follows are two sounds that every sports fan knows. First, that whip-like clacking sound when a tennis ball gets caught on the white polyester tape of the net at over 100 km/h. And then, after a tenth of a second of absolute silence, the sound of a football stadium as the home team scores a goal. 40:40, debut.
Three match points gone. And now Alcaraz is in the tunnel. An unreachable ace is followed by a spectacular forehand winner out of trouble. A point that you can only play when you have the feeling that everything is going well. Jeu Alcaraz. Sinner is still leading 5:4 and is now on serve, but the audience and momentum have long been on the other side. It’s finally an away game. Alcaraz encourages the crowd on the way to the bank as if it were still too quiet for him. This is his territory. Head up, chest out.
“Setting the bar in the stratosphere”
Sinner loses 13 of 14 points in this phase and the set in the tie-break. Everything is level again. From now on, both will fight a duel that Roland-Garros has never seen before with this quality, intensity and eye level. Tennis from another planet. The most beautifully summarized was the English “Guardian” this first Grand Slam final of the two matadors together: “At the start of a new era in men’s tennis, they have raised the bar into the stratosphere.” Sinner himself put it most shockingly: “I definitely won’t sleep well tonight.”
When the Spanish anthem sounds for the winner Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner stands lost in thought in the background, with the silver platter for the runner-up in his right hand, looking into nowhere. In four weeks, he doesn’t know yet, he will win Wimbledon, the most important tennis tournament in the world. But he will carry the memory of that French Open final lost in the most tragic and dramatic way, of the three match points, with him until next year. “Only then does it stop“Boris Becker once said. And he should know.