The Sinner robot finally overcomes the intractable Alcaraz

BarcelonaCarlos Alcaraz Garfia tastes the bitter taste of defeat in a Grand Slam final on the ATP circuit for the first time in his short professional career. He had won all five of them, and this Sunday his main rival, Jannik Sinner, found a way to defeat him at Wimbledon, where the player from Palmar (Murcia) had won the last two editions (2023 and 2024). The German-speaking tennis player from northern Italy, who went from strength to strength, triumphed for the first time in the glamorous British tournament and consolidated his position at the top of the world rankings (6-4, 4-6, 4-6 and 3-6).

In the first set, Sinner was able to recover from a promising start by Alcaraz, who defended his first serve with an impeccable game. As the points ticked by, the Italian, less volatile but more consistent than his opponent, gained momentum until he held the fourth game to love, which gave him the momentum to break the Murcia native's serve in the fifth game (2-3). But Alcaraz didn't flinch at this small disadvantage. In the eighth and ninth games, Juan Carlos Ferrero's pupil activated the steamroller to recover the lost ground despite struggling to be reliable on the first serve (5-4). And finally, in the tenth, he broke Sinner again to take the first set with a brutal final point (6-4). However, the San Candido native reacted.

Two years younger than the Italian, Alcaraz again paid for his inconsistency in the opening of the second set, losing his serve (0-1). For a while, he held on to a partial advantage until consolidating it at the end of the set (4-6). Along the way, he showed enormous reliability with points won on his first serve, despite not winning any in the format. ace (direct serve) until the third set. In fact, in the game that tied the match, he roused the All England Club crowd with two sensational winners.

The third set, a turning point

In the third set, Alcaraz was on the verge of surrendering his first serve again, but this time he gritted his teeth to save two break points against him. Sinner, expressionless and at times robotic, was hitting harder and more accurately than the Murcian at this point in the match, but he had to wait until the ninth game to cool off that temporary lead on the scoreboard (4-5). Carlitos, with a twisted expression, did not convey good feelings. He communicated this to Ferrero and the rest of his team. staff. Very uncomfortable, especially in defending points from the back of the court, the world number two ended up losing the third set (4-6), when the match reached two hours and 18 minutes and the summer sun began to set in London.

"Let's go", shouted Alcaraz to celebrate the first point of the fourth set. He needed some motivation to counter Sinner's insulting reliability in almost all facets of the game. But it was of little use against the Italian's onslaught, who broke his serve in the third game (1-2) thanks to a winning shot. A Real Madrid player, the Murcia native tried to catch the epic spirit. The recipe worked well for him to win the last edition of Roland Garros – also against Sinner – after being trailing throughout the final. (4-6). Sinner, who sometimes seems like an AI experiment, finally raised his arms against his historic rival.