The US Open continued Alcaraz and Sinner’s tennis domination. What now?

Jannik Sinner of Italy (left) and Carlos Alcaraz of Spain (right) during the men’s semifinals of the U.S. Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, N.Y., on Sept. 5, 2025. Sinner and Alcaraz have split the past eight Grand Slams evenly between them; what that means depends on how much someone follows the sport. (Ben Solomon/The New York Times)

By CHARLIE ECCLESHARE / THE ATHLETIC

How good does one match have to be to make up for the other 126 feeling almost irrelevant?

That’s the question facing men’s tennis at the Grand Slams, given the gulf separating Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz from the rest of the sport. The answer? Probably a bit better than Sunday’s U.S. Open final, which was enjoyable but never really caught fire as Alcaraz won comfortably in four sets. Likewise the Wimbledon final, which Sinner took in four sets in another good-but-not-great contest.

Even these two are not always going to produce matches like their French Open final earlier this year, or their quarterfinal at the U.S. Open three years ago. Very few five-set matches between any players are consistently high quality, and it is a lot of pressure on one match to define an entire tournament.

Sinner and Alcaraz have split the past eight slams evenly between them; what that means depends on how much someone follows the sport. For casual fans, an almost guaranteed Sinner-Alcaraz final is broadly just fine. Those who follow tennis more closely typically like more than just one subplot.

Sinner and Alcaraz lost two sets between them in the buildup to the final, and they dropped their serve six times combined. Alcaraz broke Sinner five times Sunday, more than Sinner’s previous six opponents could muster among them. Since January’s Australian Open, when Novak Djokovic beat Alcaraz in the quarterfinals, the two have been taken to five sets just once between them: a fifth set at Wimbledon that Alcaraz won, 6-1, against 38-year-old Fabio Fognini. That number would have been two had Grigor Dimitrov not had to retire two sets up against Sinner at Wimbledon.

The closest rival to Sinner and Alcaraz is Djokovic, who reached the semifinals of all four majors this year, and did at least post that one victory against Alcaraz. But on Friday, after losing in straight sets to Alcaraz, having done so to Sinner at the French Open and Wimbledon, Djokovic, the archest of arch-competitors, effectively hoisted the white flag.

“It will be very difficult for me in the future to overcome the hurdle of Sinner, Alcaraz, in best-of-five tennis at the Grand Slams,” Djokovic said in a news conference. “I think I have a better chance best of three, but best of five, it’s tough.”

Alexander Zverev, the No. 3-ranked player in the world but in a different galaxy than Sinner and Alcaraz, was asked before the tournament what it’s like knowing those two are in a Grand Slam draw. “It sucks. It’s terrible,” he said in a joking-but-not-really-joking way. Since reaching the Australian Open final, where Sinner beat him comprehensively, Zverev has won six Grand Slam matches in three tournaments.

Ben Shelton, Lorenzo Musetti, Taylor Fritz and Félix Auger-Aliassime were the other semifinalists this year, but none was truly close to reaching a final. And though Auger-Aliassime’s run was exciting over the past couple of weeks, it does not guarantee a springboard to sustained success. At the men’s Grand Slams, there are interesting stories to be found through the first 10 days, but by the end, there are only two players in the draw who really matter.

After his loss Sunday, Sinner said that his regular game, which is good enough to beat everyone else, became a problem when he has to play Alcaraz. He doesn’t need to use a great deal of variety against everybody else; against Alcaraz, he needs to use it a lot, perfectly, and right away. He talked about testing different things even if it meant losing the occasional match.

Alcaraz said that after losing the Wimbledon final to Sinner, he underwent a two-week training block. The focus was on “the specific things I want to improve if I want to beat Jannik.”

Neither of those approaches speaks to a hugely competitive tour. The frequency with which they meet in finals appears to make some of the losses less heartbreaking for Sinner and Alcaraz, and by extension their supporters, both safe in the knowledge that either man should have the chance to avenge the loss pretty soon.

The longer, more entrenched duopoly of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal offers a counterpoint. They shared 11 straight majors from the 2005 French Open to the 2007 U.S. Open; by the 2009 U.S. Open, they had shared 17 out of 18. Who cared that they dropped one set between them en route to the 2008 Wimbledon final, when the final itself was that good?

Their finals still managed to take on an epochal quality because of the strength of feeling they engendered in people, and the curiosity of whether and when Federer would score an “away” win at Roland Garros, or Nadal would do so at Wimbledon.

Djokovic ultimately emerged as the third man, which enriched the dynamic and added layers, creating three rivalries where previously there had been one. A third man for Alcaraz and Sinner would give men’s tennis a major jolt. There does not seem to be an obvious disruptive equivalent among the players in their early 20s, when Djokovic started pressing Federer and Nadal. The expectation is that the next superstar is younger, someone like João Fonseca, who only recently turned 19 and is understandably still learning the game.

“If we have more players fighting for the big titles, for people I think it’s going to be even more entertainment,” Alcaraz’s coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, a former world No. 1 who played through the Federer-Nadal and early Big Three eras, said Sunday.

“For us, it’s going to be worse, because we have to mix the tournaments. But, yeah, it’s always welcome, the players that rise and play a high level.”

He added: “I think people learn from these kind of matches. They know where the level is and where they have to go.”

A sport generally wants to be not wildly unpredictable, but not too predictable. The Big Four era, when Andy Murray was almost always in the semifinals or finals along with one of the other three, was close to perfect. The same players got to the end of majors, but there was excitement in how things would shake out. One player dominating gets tedious very quickly; so does a string of one-time winners.

Men’s tennis now is somewhere in the middle. This isn’t to diminish the achievements of other players, many of whom have done great things relative to their expectations this year. But at the very top of the sport, there is just a gulf in class.

Things change very quickly in tennis, and maybe one or both of Sinner and Alcaraz will fade, or someone else will emerge. But Sunday’s final was a reminder that a whole tournament is a heavy weight for any two players to carry — even Sinner and Alcaraz.