TURIN, Italy — And so the year ends as it began, with Jannik Sinner’s arms around a big silver trophy, making a mess of the competition and tennis history for his suddenly tennis-mad country.
Just like he did in the U.S. Open final in September, Sinner crushed the hopes of American Taylor Fritz in the ATP Tour Finals — 6-4, 6-4 — to finish the tournament undefeated and collect the $4.8million (£3.8million) winner’s check that includes a bonus for going five wins from five. He didn’t even drop a set, something which hasn’t been done since 1986 and which only John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl can match.
With the win, Sinner finished the season with 70 wins and just 6 losses, three of which came against Carlos Alcaraz, who remains his nearest rival despite what the ATP Tour rankings — and the late stages of the season — might say. Sinner won two Grand Slam titles and five other tournaments in 2024 to wrest control of the sport from Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic, who, along with the rest of the field, will now spend the sport’s brief off-season trying to figure how to match the Italian’s easy power that he can explode from seemingly every corner of the court.
“Insane year,” Fritz said during the trophy presentation.
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So far, only Alcaraz, with his acrobatic attack and comfort in the front half of the court, has regularly been able to come up with an answer. These two players have reconfigured men’s tennis into a hyper-aggressive game of chicken, in which to hit a neutral ball is to be on defense and to be on defense is to lose (against each other) or to steal the point (against pretty much everybody else).
Fritz did his best to keep up for much of the early evening in northern Italy, jumping to the baseline on Sinner’s first serve and hitting with the aggression and conviction that has seen him eke past world No. 2 Alexander Zverev so many times this season. Sinner responded by producing a spot-serving masterclass, hitting 10 aces in the first set and four in the second that between them flirted with every line of the service boxes. He used his injection of pace on his backhand down the line to keep Fritz off balance.
And then, break point down, Fritz hit three perfectly decent rally balls from the light blue between the baseline and the TORINO emblazoned there. But on the third, for whatever reason, he thought he hadn’t done enough when he probably had, and hopped behind the lettering. Sinner saw it and finessed a drop shot. The set was gone from there.
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The second set turned five games in. The break didn’t require anything so fancy this time, just one pelted stroke after another, until Fritz’s last forehand floated long, and just about every throat in the standing-room-only crowd at Alpina Arena roared like they’ve been roaring all week for the country’s first world No. 1, its first men’s Grand Slam winner, and now its first Tour Finals champion.
The DJ hit the Black Eyed Peas. WillIAm told everyone tonight was going to be a very good night. And all that was left for was for Sinner to ride a serve that has become so reliably potent in the last 14 months, the final component of an arsenal that never had all that many weaknesses to begin with and the one place where he holds an unarguable advantage over Alcaraz.
A year ago in this building, Alcaraz was asked what he thought Sinner’s future. Alcaraz immediately shot back that he thought Sinner would be the next No. 1. He quickly interrupted himself, realizing he’d basically just been caught telling the truth — that Sinner’s power and consistency would overtake him one day soon. He quickly pivoted and said Sinner would be the next player to seriously challenge for No. 1. He was right.
Alcaraz had been experiencing what everyone else had been watching. Sinner added weight and muscle to his beanpole frame and switched to launching into his serve with his feet together rather than separate — pinpoint stance rather than platform — allowing him to get the slightest bit more height and leverage. His first serve now slides and skids into the corners just as his feet do in baseline rallies, leaving his rivals on their heels all over the court.
Fritz got a well-deserved rousing ovation during the awards ceremony, as much for the four tight sets he played against Sinner in the span of five days as for his surge into the top echelon of the sport, if not the tippy-top. Fritz, who will be world No. 4 come Monday, doesn’t draw the eyeballs of other Americans, such as Frances Tiafoe or Ben Shelton but he’s lately been beating all but the best of the best and playing the best tennis of his life.
“His forehand doesn’t break down anymore,” Zverev said after his latest loss to the American in the semifinals on Saturday.
“He played great,” said Michael Russell, Fritz’s longtime coach.
The performance rating devised for the ATP by Tennis Data Innovations and Tennis Viz rated his performance a 9 on a scale of 1-10. His average for the season is an 8.1.
Problem was, Sinner’s performance garnered a 9.5, 5 percent better than his average for 2024.
Sinner will at some point see trouble on the horizon. On court, Alcaraz, who beat him three times out of three this year, will get better too. His other rivals — Zverev, Fritz, Medvedev — have vowed to adapt their tennis and even remake their games in order to beat him and Alcaraz when it matters.
Off court, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is seeking a ban of one or two years in its appeal of his doping case, which it submitted to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in September.
Earlier this year, Sinner twice tested positive for clostebol, an anabolic steroid. Three tribunals convened by the tennis anti-doping authorities accepted his explanation that the substance inadvertently ended up in his system after his physiotherapist used it to treat a cut on his own finger, then gave Sinner a massage. WADA, too, accepts this explanation but believes he should bear some responsibility for the actions of his support team.
In Turin and the here and now it was his speciality that finished off Fritz: A baseline exchange and a backhand down the line that his opponent could only spray long and wide to give Sinner his first big title on home soil. The green, white, red and orange exploded into technicolor as the cap came off and the hugs with his team began.
His father doesn’t travel much to watch his son. He’s too busy cooking at the family restaurant in San Candido, the ski village near the Austrian border where Sinner grew up. He was court-side for this one. They had their arms around each other as soon as they could, before Sinner wrapped his own around yet another trophy.
(Top photo: Valerio Pennicino / Getty Images)
