For Sinner, court brings peace and dominance

Jannik Sinner of Italy celebrates after beating Taylor Fritz of the United States during the men’s singles final match of the U.S. Open at Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024. (Karsten Moran/The New York Times)

By Matthew Futterman / The Athletic

In January, at the start of the Grand Slam season, Jannik Sinner of Italy became the de facto best tennis player in the world by winning the Australian Open. He reaffirmed that position Sunday in New York, rising out of a “difficult” few months, he said, to win the U.S. Open for the first time, giving him two Grand Slam tennis titles for his career.

Sinner, 23, defeated Taylor Fritz 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 in front of a crowd hoping to see an American man win the U.S. Open for the first time in 21 years.

Sinner made Fritz look close to helpless. On one point, he would crush a forehand that the American would struggle to retrieve. The next, he would outlast him in a 20-shot rally, with the patience of a monk.

After he forced Fritz into one last forehand into the middle of the net, Sinner raised his arms and celebrated with all the bombast of an insurance executive who had just wrapped up a good day at the office.

While Novak Djokovic makes tennis history and Carlos Alcaraz lights up the court with his unmatched tennis acrobatics, Sinner takes care of business, more often than not. He does it especially well when he does not have his health or an off-court cloud over his head.

“This last period of my career was really not easy,” Sinner said on the court, just before he picked up the champion’s trophy and a check for $3.6 million.

It was a not-very-vague reference to his twice testing positive for clostebol, a banned substance in the sport, in March, and the ensuing battle to prove his innocence, conducted out of public view. News of those positive tests broke the week before the start of the U.S. Open. As did the ruling of an independent tribunal, convened by the International Tennis Integrity Agency, which determined Sinner bore “no fault or negligence” and so would not be barred.

The news turned Sinner into a lightning rod for a series of tennis debates: about preferential treatment for star players, rules that do not treat all drug tests equally and whether he should even have been allowed to play at the U.S. Open, the year’s final Grand Slam tournament.

He received a penalty, forfeiting the prize money and rankings points from the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, where the original test took place. He fired his physiotherapist and his trainer, who had purchased the healing spray containing the clostebol that had gotten into his body via transdermal contamination.

Certain players criticized him and the system publicly. Sinner addressed that criticism, expressing relief that the news was out.

“The preparation for this tournament has not been perfect because, you know, of certain circumstances,” he said in a news conference before his first match. “But whoever knows me very well knows that I would never do something that goes against the rules.”

There was a silver lining, he said: He was going to find out who his true friends were.

And then the tournament started. Athletes in turmoil often find peace on their playing field. They can shut out the noise and focus on the next ball, the next game, the next match.

That is what Sinner did, even after looking stale and out of sorts as he dropped the first set of his first match against American Mackenzie McDonald. He dropped just one more set on his way to holding the trophy in his hands.

Off the court, he relied on the people who knew him the longest. “They couldn’t make all the trouble go away, but they helped,” he said, adding, “It’s still a little bit in my mind. It’s not that it’s gone, but when I’m on court, I try to focus about the game.”

On Sunday, he came out firing, taking advantage of a day when Fritz’s best shot, his serve, abandoned him. By Fritz’s admission, his groundstrokes were also not at the level that they had been recently.

“I’m pretty disappointed in how I played, how I hit certain shots,” Fritz said in a news conference. “I just would have liked to have played better, and given myself a better chance.”

Even then, he seemed to recognize that it might not have made much of a difference, given how many answers Sinner had for whatever Fritz threw at him. They were fairly even on short points, with Sinner winning 60 to Fritz’s 56, but when a point lasted more than four shots, Sinner won 36 and lost 23.

As the match wore on and Fritz’s serve picked up, Sinner adjusted. He moved farther behind the base line, switching from attacking the ball to looping it back deep, knowing he only had to extend the rallies to earn the chance to dominate the points. He crushed Fritz’s last hopes of a comeback with a lunging backhand return off a 133-mph laser down the middle.

Sinner’s ball landed deep to Fritz’s backhand, and six shots later, the American was again scrambling hopelessly after a forehand from Sinner’s racket.

Fritz had thrown his best punch. Sinner had too many better ones.

When the match was over, two games later and just 2 hours, 15 minutes after it began, the ground in tennis had firmed, not shifted. There was a gulf between Sinner and Alcaraz and everyone else before the U.S. Open started. Djokovic is capable of hanging with them when his body and mind are sound.

That was about where things stood when it was over. For the first time since 2003, Roger Federer, Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have failed to win a Grand Slam tournament. A Big Three era has given way to a time of two.

It may be this way for a little while.

“It’s good for the sport to have new champions,” Sinner said, the trophy at his side.