Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and the French Open final that neither player will lose

New York Times

07-06-2025

ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — Back when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were dominating men's tennis, a pattern developed. The more the Big Three played each other, the better they all became. Across 150 matches, they played, they improved, and they played again, all at a level that everyone else in men's tennis could not access.
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A virtuous cycle for them; a doom loop for everybody else.
Something similar is happening in men's tennis again, and the protagonists are Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. Their level is already too high for everybody else, but put them on the same court and things go stratospheric. With two of the Big Three retired, and one of them, Djokovic, recognizing that his last matches are coming sooner than later, Sinner and Alcaraz have closed off an era of Grand Slam tennis that was supposed to be open.
They have won the last five Grand Slams between them. Sinner took three of them, Alcaraz two. After Sunday's French Open final, that recent tally will either be 3-3, or 4-2 in Sinner's favour.
These two have never met before in a major final, but everything suggests that it will become a regular occurrence. Sinner had to be at his computer-game-character best to beat a resurgent Djokovic in the semifinals Friday, but the men's draw has felt like one big prelude to the meeting of a new Big Two. It's had shades of Wimbledon in 2008, when Federer and Nadal lost one set between them en route to a final that has gone down in tennis history.
In this context, this match feels like a paradox: a Grand Slam final that neither player can lose. When it's over, there will be a champion and a runner-up, but in the bigger picture, this is just another piece in an overwhelming dossier of evidence that Sinner and Alcaraz take each other to heights that are far too high for their competitors over five sets.
They have already become a pack like the Big Three used to be: even if a contender gets past one, they almost certainly won't get past both. Beating Alcaraz took so much out of Djokovic at the Australian Open in January that he couldn't finish his semifinal before a possible final against Sinner; Daniil Medvedev beat Sinner in five sets at Wimbledon last year, but his quarterfinal win just softened him up for Alcaraz a couple of days later.
This tennis rivalry is symbiotic, but it appears that Alcaraz needs Sinner more than the other way around. Sinner is so hyper-focused that the motivation of winning the next point seems to be enough for him, even if he did credit Alcaraz with making him more 'unpredictable' after beating Djokovic.
Alcaraz is wired a little differently, so sure that matches are in his control that he can easily lose focus, but just as easily bring it back when he needs it.
'Sometimes we just think about myself. Sometimes we think about how I lost the set in the match, and we don't think about how he won the set. So that's the difference,' he said after wearing down Lorenzo Musetti in his semifinal.
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His focus does not wane against Sinner, who he actively enjoys playing against. Like meeting the only other person who likes the same music, or a fellow lover of obscure film, Alcaraz appreciates being around his only real equal.
'My favorite thing is it gives me the feedback of how I can be better, a better player,' Alcaraz said. 'That's important, and that's beautiful, and if I win or not, it gives you a lot of stats and gives you the feedback.'
No one can do the things that Alcaraz does apart from Sinner, and their matches make him come alive. He has won their last four meetings, a level of consistency that elsewhere can be elusive. While Sinner was serving a three-month anti-doping ban, Alcaraz looked a little lost. He bombed out of a few tournaments in a Sinner-less world, losing to Jiří Lehečka in Doha and David Goffin in Miami along the way. It wasn't until getting on the clay in Monte Carlo that he found his feet.
Alcaraz wouldn't be the first to need a rival to reach their best level. John McEnroe was similarly bereft when his great adversary Bjorn Borg retired in the 1980s. Federer has admitted that he didn't especially want a rival when Nadal emerged, but he came to understand how the Spaniard lifted him to even greater heights.
'They elevate you because you have to play better,' Martina Navratilova said during a recent interview, reflecting in part on her epic 80-match rivalry with Chris Evert.
'You have to be close to your best to beat the other one. Because they're not going to give it to you. In tennis, you can only play great if the other player forces you to play great, because you can only hit great shots if they force you to hit great shots.'
Alcaraz and Sinner can hit great shots against everyone, but it's against each other that they achieve greatness, taking each other to levels so high that their good is more than enough to get it done against the rest of the tour's best. Against Musetti, the No. 8 seed and second-most consistent clay-court player this year, Alcaraz meandered his way through the first two sets but still comfortably won the match. Musetti was forced to retire in the fourth set, having previously won one game in the final two sets of their Monte Carlo Masters final two months ago, when the Italian also faded physically.
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'I knew it even before stepping on court that I had to play probably the best match of my career so far (to win),' Musetti said of Friday's encounter.
For Sinner, the comfort he feels against everyone else is even more pronounced. He has lost eight matches since the start of last year: four to Alcaraz and four to everybody else.
Before meeting Djokovic in Friday's semifinal, Sinner's longest match at this year's French Open had lasted two hours, 15 minutes. It took Lehečka 55 minutes to even win a game against him, while it was 27 minutes for Andrey Rublev and Alexander Bublik. These are all current or recent top-25 players.
But compared to Alcaraz, everyone bar Djokovic seems to feel like a breeze to him. Casper Ruud, a three-time major finalist, lost 6-0, 6-1 to Sinner at the Italian Open last month. It took Ruud 47 minutes to win a game, and he said in a news conference afterwards that: 'It was like playing a wall that shoots hundred-mile-an-hour balls at you all the time.'
Against Alcaraz, those hundred-mile-an-hour balls come back with interest. Former leading women's players Kim Clijsters and Daniela Hantuchova spoke in interviews this week about working on improving elements of their game to live with certain opponents, and Sinner echoed this after reaching Sunday's final.
'From my point of view, he's a player who makes me a better player,' Sinner said in his news conference. 'He pushes me to the limit. We try to understand where we have to improve, for the next times I play against him.'
There's nothing more helpful for Sinner and Alcaraz than playing against each other. So while only one man can win on Sunday, the rest of the ATP Tour will be the real losers.