Carlos Alcaraz was, for a second year in a row, crowned French Open champion today, beating Jannik Sinner 4-6, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 7-6 (10-2) to capture his fifth major. The match was one for the ages—an epic showdown between the two heavyweights of men’s tennis and, at five hours and 29 minutes, the longest final in French Open history and the second-longest final at any major. (It was also only the third time a grand slam final has been decided by a tiebreaker).
Given the two players’ dominance in the last few years—either Sinner or Alcaraz has won the last five slams, and seven out of the last 10; neither of them had lost a slam final before today (Alcaraz 4-0, Sinner 3-0)—it’s almost ridiculous that they hadn’t played each other on one of the sport’s biggest stages until now.
In a capsule preview of the rest of the match, their first game alone lasted 12 minutes and featured 16 points, with five deuces; had the entire match proceeded at that neck-and-neck, nerve-wracking parity, it would have lasted about 10 hours. The remainder of the first set was more of the same, with both players seemingly feeling each other out, akin to two boxers trading jabs in the first round of a title fight.
Sinner pulled away clearly in the second set, only for Alcaraz to fight his way back to a tiebreak, but alas: At this point, despite the closeness of the scoreboard, Sinner was clearly dominant. While Alcaraz clearly possesses the most potent firepower in the game—along with a panther-like quickness—Sinner’s ability to return virtually anything hit to his side of the net neutralized and frustrated Alcaraz. As astute masters of the game from Andre Agassi to Brad Gilbert have noted, Alcaraz (much like Aryna Sabalenka) is continually playing in fourth gear; what he needs is a steady and consistent third gear, which Sinner (and, yes, Coco Gauff) deploy in abundance.
All of that turned upside-down in the third set, with Alcaraz leaping ahead with an early break of Sinner’s serve and some incredible shows of strength from both players. (The one shame of an epic showdown like this is that, because both players are executing at such a high level, the truly unbelievable speed and pace at which they hit the ball—both players ripped forehands at more than 100mph many times during the match—often gets lost in the shuffle, particularly with the overhead angle from the baseline shown on most broadcasts.) But a solid, steady performance from Alcaraz allowed him to seize the set, 6-4, delighting the crowd—which included Pharrell Williams, Natalie Portman, Lily Collins, Spike Lee, Omar Sy, and Dustin Hoffman, among other notables. It was the first set Sinner lost in the entire tournament. Forget that third gear: This was pedal-to-the-metal, lights-out tennis.
Yet again the statistics put both players between a rock and a hard place: Sinner had never won a match that had gone on this long, ever—and Alcaraz had never come back from being two sets down. So what happened? Another war of attrition in the fourth, until the seventh game of that set—when Sinner, with impeccable touch and poise, broke Alcaraz’s serve at love, setting him up to serve out the match.
Here’s where things got weird: After being up 40-0—forty-love!!!—at 5-3 as Alcaraz served what should have been the final game of the match, Sinner tanked five points in a row to hand Alcaraz the game and send the crowd into an absolute frenzy. (In hindsight, one can see that from this moment on, with few exceptions, the match became Alcaraz’s to lose, though of course one doesn’t watch live sports in hindsight.) Alcaraz then broke Sinner’s serve, evening things up at 5-5 in the fourth, with the stadium erupting into “CAR-LOS” chants. Having won 10 of the last 11 points, Alcaraz held serve to go up 6-5, with the match now approaching four hours in length, and Sinner held serve in the next game, forcing a tiebreak, which Alcaraz dominated, 7-3.
And so to a deciding fifth set! More jabs, more streaks, more feints and bobs; in the sixth game of that set, a blown line call at a crucial moment sent the normally composed Sinner into a bit of a (rightful) tizzy—the French Open is the only grand slam tournament still using human rather than electronic line-calling—as he fell behind 2-4 before improbably clawing his way back to 5-5. From this point on, both players traded the kind of ridiculous, impossible shots that only the two of them could pull off—both in the remaining games to get to 6-6 and then, in the deciding tiebreak—thrilling, nervy, breathtaking tennis.
But it was Alcaraz who truly dominated at the end, taking the tiebreak 10-2 (in major finals, final-set tiebreaks are first to 10 rather than the usual seven)—an hour and 45 minutes after Sinner had three match points. As if to underscore the general insanity of the play today, match point featured Alcaraz running down a seemingly impossible shot—only to seem to bend a running forehand around the net post before watching it curl into the court. Alcaraz collapsed on his back and threw his hands over his face; his dear mother watching him in the stands finally took her hands away from her face, and the celebrations began.
After a match of that length, with that kind of intensity, both players were rather subdued during the trophy presentation ceremonies, but the respect and admiration Alcaraz and Sinner clearly feel for each other was palpable, with each one going out of his way to pay tribute to the other. Sinner, as Alcaraz noted, will have many more championships to play for, and will clearly learn from this match and bring even more to the court the next time these two face each other—after all, that’s what champions (cf. Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, et al) do.
Jannik Sinner is only 23; Carlos Alcaraz just 22—when Alcaraz was asked, after the match, if he was going to get another tattoo to add to the Eiffel Tower he had inked on himself after his first title in Paris last year, he had this to say: “I’ll have to ask my dad.”
We can t wait for the next installment of this already historic rivalry.
