When Alcaraz, Sinner dazzled, left us almost blinded and breathless

Hindustan Times

5 hours ago

You know what they're calling it? Alcaraz versus Sinner and their 5h29m? This longest French Open final over the last 100 years of the event's international competition? At the end of Sunday's nerve-shredding, head-clutching, soaring mind-bender of a men's singles final, it has been placed by many as among its top five or six.
There's apparently lists being made of TopWhatever Grand Slam GOAT finals, with fierce debates on Alcaraz-Sinner's inclusion or exclusion there. Wherever you saw the final, savour it, let it roll about in your mind. You know where it stands in your own sporting and emotional matrix, let the pedantic de-construct.
Here is where we stand on the Monday morning after. Firstly, it's a public holiday. Nothing to do with the tennis but to mark Pentecost Monday, the 50 days after Easter. Tennis' holy trinity anyway stands disbanded; A fortnight ago, the Quartet (including Andy Murray) gathered to pay tribute to Roland Garros' favourite son. During their epic final, the two leaders of Gen Now left not merely a mark but a part of themselves - sweat, guts, heart, soul, tenor, timbre – on the Chatrier, appropriately alongside Rafa's footprint.
And then asked the world, guys, do you see us now?
We knew them and of them earlier but on Sunday we saw Alcaraz and Sinner combined at their brightest and were left almost blinded and breathless by their light. Alcaraz, defending champion, had already won four Grand Slams at the age of 22. Jannik Sinner, 23, is world No.1, a player of clean, linear efficiency, deafening power in his racket and an 18-1 win-loss record for the season before Sunday. When the second week of Roland Garros began, there lurked some moaning about the event being 'flat', without you know who. In their final, Alcaraz and Sinner wiped that slate clean over five hours and marked a milestone in their rivalry.
Whenever a match turns into a living creature that grabs you by the throat and keeps you frozen in your spot, its venue too turns in on itself, compact and compressed with no mind space for anything else. And so it was on Sunday, after Sinner took control of the match, with the crowd pushing Alcaraz to respond. Spaniards in the stands chanted his name, the support for Sinner present but heard less.
Carlito's faithful were calling for something closer. Something that teetered on the edges which for more than two sets – totalling two hours, 14 minutes – had been under Sinner's reliable boom of a first serve and his control of the court. Until then Alcaraz, a creature of many gifts – control of timing, speed of foot and creative shot-making – appeared a nanosecond off his incisive sharpness of response. Until he was not.
There is no knowing where that came from, that switch. Maybe it was when Sinner was bearing down towards the finish line. Maybe those three match points. The expression often heard and uttered of athletes 'raising their game'. We felt it happen and saw with our eyes how it is done. For Sinner until he had three match points, Alcaraz from that point on for refusing to let go.
He climbed into Sinner's serve and covered the court like a fiend, created angles running around his backhand, slicing the court into narrower and narrower slivers from where there were points to be won. Every time the crowd thought Sinner had sealed a point, Alcaraz extracted enough reach to put racket to ball at its most distant end.
From the first time he had found his groove in the third set, Alcaraz drew fuel and lift from the crowd. Every break of serve, every game held after fighting off a Sinner resurgence was responded to like he'd won the damn thing. Alcaraz shook his fist at the stands as he passed by to serve or back to his chair, egging them on to egg him on. The entire Chatrier village, and Alcaraz said it himself later, helped raise their defending champion back from match points down on the way to his second title.
Even as the world thought Sinner had faded, being broken early in the fifth, he hauled himself back at the tail end of the match, levelling the set and pushing Alcaraz to reach within. Or maybe from somewhere beyond. At 5-6, 15-30 down, Sinner at the centre of the net, everything covered, Alcaraz created a narrow cross court forehand that went across his opponent before he could twitch. It was a shot of great physical capability but also an athletic imagination whose range is only just being comprehended.
Cheering and chanting are deliberate responses, but the outbreaks of nervous shrieks gasping, collective intakes of breaths – that was 15,000 instincts finding expression.
Both Sinner and Alcaraz, world No.1 and world No.2, are in their early twenties, just out of boyhood, their faces not yet crystallised into the men they will become. No matter how different they are on the outside, these are worthy rivals cut from the same competitive cloth.
At two different points in the match, one early, one late, both men called the line for his adversary's serve when the match situation was testing them. Alcaraz for a Sinner serve down the tee that was called a fault by a line judge. Sinner for an Alcaraz wide serve even as the umpire was getting down from her chair, scuffing the ground beneath his foot and sparing her the trouble.
These two twentysomethings at the top of men's tennis today carry their lineage well.
As the reporters streamed back into their work room, one man was heard asking, 'What did we do to deserve this?' For someone at their first Roland Garros ever, mon dieu, what indeed?