In 2023, the most thrilling matchup in men’s tennis was the young Carlos Alcaraz versus the veteran Novak Djokovic. At Wimbledon, with the No. 1 ranking in the balance, Alcaraz defeated Djokovic in an enthralling five-set test of tenacity and nerve. But, in an interview following that victory, Alcaraz sought to make clear that he did not envision Djokovic as a rival. He, Alcaraz, already had one. “I’m talking about Jannik Sinner,” he said. “I’m not afraid to say it. He and I have already had great battles on all surfaces and in various tournaments, and I believe we will fight together for major titles in the future as well.”
Alcaraz wasn’t wrong. The contest between him and Djokovic was a fight between generations—the greatest player in one cohort trying not to pass the torch to the one who’s up next. But tennis’s true rivalries pair players who are coming of age at roughly the same time, arriving at the cusp of preëminence together. These battles, if they last long enough, become mnemonic, helping us to recall eras: the Borg-McEnroe period of the late seventies and early eighties, the Agassi-Sampras age in the nineties, Federer-Nadal in the two-thousands, and Nadal-Djokovic in the twenty-tens. A single player, of course, can dominate an age, as Serena Williams did in women’s tennis for twenty years; the women’s game has had just one truly captivating rivalry—Steffi Graf versus Monica Seles—since the sport’s greatest rivalry, between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, ended nearly forty years ago. But on the men’s side, during that same stretch, greatness has been revealed most vividly in the repeated battles of eminent pairs. These have not only brought out the best in each player; they have evoked the promise of the sport—that it can be renewed, furthered.
Alcaraz and Sinner have yet to meet in a Grand Slam final, where the stakes are highest and rivalries have traditionally been confirmed. They lack the contrast in style of play—serve-and-volleyer versus baseliner, all-court attacker versus defensive scrambler—that is often a hallmark of an absorbing rivalry. And they seem to have no personal enmity toward each other. They are not rivals who have come, over time, to be on friendly terms, as Federer and Nadal did, but genuinely good friends who, on the court, are never anything but warm, even while being full of fight.
Despite all this, their rivalry has begun to take real and riveting shape—the first in men’s tennis to arise in the wake of the era dominated by the big three of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. And the tennis that they play against each other is like no other tennis that’s being played now or, really, has ever been played before.
It is, first of all, breakneck tennis. You can’t compete in the men’s game today without an explosive first step, but theirs are unflaggingly hair-trigger—no ball that one of them gets to and strikes on the fly can be safely presumed to be beyond the reach of the dashing other. And once either of them gets to a ball? Their ground strokes are beyond what only yesterday was considered powerful. They hit forehands on the run harder than many players can from the middle of the court, shots that have a sound off the racquet that’s weapon-like, hair-raising. Not infrequently, these are shots they exchange. Unless they’re deliberately changing things up, and drastically. How about an out-of-nowhere drop shot floated from the baseline? Or a sudden bolt to the net for a full-sprint knifing volley? On it goes, and it’s magical: tennis as an all-court high-wire act.
The best show that the two of them have put on to date was at the 2022 U.S. Open, a nighttime quarterfinal match in which Alcaraz outlasted Sinner—and most everybody who came to watch—in a five-set astonishment that went on until a little before three in the morning. But they just don’t do dull, whenever or wherever. They met for the eighth time last weekend, in a semifinal at Indian Wells, in the California desert. Alcaraz, now ranked No. 2 in the world, was the tournament’s defending champion, and he had looked in his earlier-round victories to be rediscovering his form and his on-court joy after months of playing with a certain lack of Carlito-ness. The relatively slow, gritty hard courts in the desert are suited to his game, yielding the high bounce that he seeks when he mixes in a loopy topspin forehand. And the fans at Indian Wells, who love their charismatic celebrities, on the court and in the stadium suites, make him feel at home. “As I said many times,” he told reporters a couple of days before his match with Sinner, “my best level shows up when I’m smiling.”
Sinner is more subdued, more quietly charming. He arrived at Indian Wells riding an unbeaten streak that stretched back to November, when he led Italy to its first Davis Cup victory since 1976. The streak had raised his ranking to No. 3, and his ball-striking during the run had been as clean and commanding as it gets. After he defeated the rising Czech star Jiri Lehecka to earn a spot in the Indian Wells semifinals, I asked him about his rivalry with Alcaraz. But he seemed disinclined to talk too much about it. “Yeah, Carlos, it’s always fun to play with him,” he said, and grinned. “We are good friends off the court. On the court, we just try to give one hundred per cent, no?” He said that if Alcaraz beat him, he would have to go back and work on the finer points of his game, which was a good thing. Then he added, “I reckon that’s what the past big three or big four have done in a similar way. We try to do the same, no?”
He and Alcaraz were only three games into their semifinal match last Saturday afternoon when rain began to fall. They walked off the court together toward the locker room, chatting amiably. Three hours later, they got back to it, and Sinner soon appeared on his way to adding another win to his impressive streak, which was up to nineteen straight matches. He changed his service motion not long ago, from a feet-set-apart platform serve to a back-foot-dragged-forward pinpoint serve. The result is more first-serve pop, as his coltish legs bend and leap to drive him up and into the court to meet the ball. Alcaraz couldn’t get enough of Sinner’s serves into play, and those returns he did get back were falling short enough or slowly enough for Sinner to wallop them. Meanwhile, Alcaraz’s own first serve was finding the net too frequently. It was 6–1 Sinner in little more than half an hour.
The Alcaraz-Sinner show really got under way in the second set, and my notebook began filling with exclamation points. An Alcaraz forehand-volley winner in full sprint. A Sinner ace up the T at 130 m.p.h. Remarkable return winners, deadly drop shots, another Alcaraz volley winner to break Sinner’s serve and allow him to go up 3–1. And then, to begin the very next game, an unbelievable cat-and-mouse rally that dragged them both up to the net and back and then wide of the net posts as the crowd oohed, aahed, gasped, and—after one last sliding lunge shot from Alcaraz drifted wide—stood and roared and wowed together. They’d seen the point of the year. Alcaraz and Sinner, in turn, caught each other’s eye and laughed. They are entertained by being entertainers.
Alcaraz would win that set and then a deciding set, his serve finding its range and his returns becoming more penetrating, a result of moving farther back from the baseline, giving him more time to take full cuts at Sinner’s serve. What will be recalled of the match, I suspect, is not the scoreline (1–6, 6–3, 6–2), or that the two players’ head-to-head record now stands at four wins apiece, but, rather, the dozen or more extraordinary points they danced together to create. (Among other things, theirs may be a rivalry ideal for an age of shorter attention spans and shareable video clips.)
The following day, Alcaraz defended his Indian Wells title, defeating Daniil Medvedev in straight sets. Now he and Sinner move on together to the Miami Open, which has just got under way. They will be the two top seeds, placing them on different sides of the draw, with Djokovic, who crashed out of Indian Wells early, skipping the event. If they are to meet and further their rivalry in Miami, it will have to be in the final, and that would surprise no one. And what fan of the game will be rooting for anything else? ♦
