Masters Cup 2023: The gym calls Sinner, the bomb ready to explode | Tennis | Sports

The scene says a lot about Jannik Sinner, a promising tennis player who day after day is closer to the place that tennis has theoretically reserved for him for the next decade; that is, privilege. At a certain moment in the duel against the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Italian (double 6-4, in 1h 25m) takes the assistant’s cloth and wipes away the beads of sweat that endanger his maneuvers from the baseline, instead of comfortably wait for the volunteer to do it. So he squats, bends his back, identifies the risk points and crawls to erase all traces one by one. Today he is the fourth best player in the world, but he does not lack humility and has plenty of maturity. He is 22 years old, but he looks 30; on and off the track. He knows that he is there, close to the great reward. And he reaffirms the faith. The countdown continues counting down seconds: Sinner will summit soon, no one doubts.

“He has everything to be a number one,” commented his coach when the current season was beginning to heat up, back in March. And Darren Cahill, a coach who has accompanied figures such as Andre Agassi or the Australian Lleyton Hewitt, knows something about this. A year and a half ago, he and Sinner had a talk and reached an agreement; Later, Cahill played a video of Agassi and emphasized the American’s prodigious backhand that decided the games: “Andre revolutionized the game because of how he hit the ball.” And in those is the Italian one, the most attractive of the emerging projects along with that of Alcaraz; Now, the Spaniard has already made the big leap and is rubbing shoulders with Novak Djokovic himself, while he is resistant to the big stages and has found his limit in the semifinals he reached in July at Wimbledon.

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“This has been a year to understand myself better in certain situations,” he values. “Physically I have improved, I am stronger,” he says, knowing that there, in that body that tends to weaken over long distances, there is surely the unfinished business. It happened to him at the end of August in New York, when he cramped up against Alexander Zverev in a scuffle that lasted more than four and a half hours; A year ago he also leaned against Alcaraz in the same territory, after five hours; and a couple of months before, on the grass in London, he failed to sentence Djokovic despite having a two-set advantage; At three and a half hours he raised the white flag.

According to the data, Sinner has fallen in seven of the 12 five-set matches he has played so far. Pending strengthening his body (1.88 tall and fine muscles) and adapting it to extreme situations, he instead proposes a more than notable performance in confrontations against rivals belonging to the top-20; Specifically, the Italian has won 10 of the last 12 that he has played. He knocked down Alcaraz in Beijing and defeated Daniil Medvedev both in China and in the final in Vienna, and his tennis gives off the feeling that he is getting closer to consolidating his rise in level. He dominates the Spaniard (4-3) and this year he has won four titles, in addition to being the Italian who has won the most victories (58) in a single year, ahead of Corrado Barazzutti (54).

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“It is very positive for tennis that we young people advance,” he says to reporters, becoming the most effective tennis player this year indoors, with 14 wins and only one loss. “It means that people not only care about me, but about tennis in general,” he refers to the fantastic atmosphere generated in this Masters Cup, with all the tickets sold on the first day and 13,000 spectators cheering him on. “Before, in Italy there was only one sport [el fútbol], but now tennis is growing and it’s great to be a part of it. Today, the feeling was similar to being in a football stadium,” she adds in the conference room, where she speaks English, Italian and German perfectly.

Glory awaits Sinner, and he goes on and on. Row and row. With 10 titles under his belt (nine of them last), he grows and differentiates himself from other talents of his generation: instead of getting involved with his cell phone, he prefers board games and reading, if not karts. Champion in Montpellier, Montreal (his first Masters 1000), Beijing and Vienna, he now competes as the fourth representative of his country in the master event after Adriano Panatta (1975), Barazzutti (1978) and Matteo Berrettini (2019 and 2021), al which he filled in two years ago in an emergency due to an injury. “It wasn’t easy,” he says. He then beat Hubert Hurkacz and then lost against Medvedev, so he did not progress to the semi-finals. This time he has achieved direct access to the tournament and, given the dynamics, the Turin stands have reasons to be excited. Sinner comes with force, little by little but with a firm step.

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2023-11-12 18:39:18
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