Alcaraz Won, Sinner Impressed. Same song in Paris?

Can you be more impressed by the finalist than the winner? Can being suspended turn into an advantage? Can Coco Gauff go above the last hurdle in Paris? Djokovic? So many questions!

May 19, 2025

Welcome back! I’m soon off to Roland-Garros, where you can look forward to a lot of tennis content coming your way, which should be divided 50/50 between free and paid content. It’ll be the same then at Wimbledon. If you haven’t thought yet about a paid subscription, maybe it’s the day ;)

I’ll try to bring two paid editions this week by the way, because I missed one last week due to my overall workload and me still needing to sleep. I know, shameful.

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Alcaraz Won, Sinner Impressed

Can you be more impressed by the finalist than the winner? Could Jannik Sinner become the first player to benefit from a doping ban? These were some of my thoughts while watching Rome’s Masters 1000. Sinner is already (!) in tip-top shape - ask Casper Ruud, Madrid’s champion, who got dispatched - and will be so much fresher than anybody else when Wimbledon and the end of the season come. I’m still not 100% sure he’ll be fully back at his physical best for Roland-Garros, as we saw by the end of the week in Rome that his legs were wondering why the hell they were suddenly made to do all that. But he looks freaking sharp, still.

You can see new muscles that say he and his team used these three months without competition well. You can see his game has been finely tuned, too, as evident when he was playing forehand to forehand with Carlos Alcaraz in that final in Rome. His choice-making was rusty by the end of that first set, and then his legs were gone, but that’s honestly all, and it took two weeks through a final and Carlos Alcaraz to expose the cracks in the armor. So yeah, that looks to me like Sinner will be an absolute nightmare again to play in a few weeks.

Also, yes, I know Alcaraz has now won their last four meetings and leads 7-4 in their H2H. He clearly is the only one out there who can pretend to have an edge against Sinner. And I definitely saw on Sunday how he was trying and succeeding to mix it up against Sinner to avoid triggering the Italian’s power and to get Sinner out of his patterns. I also saw how he used what is, in my opinion, his real tennis edge over Sinner until the Italian starts to get on it: his net game. But despite all of these efforts and the tactical changes and all that, Alcaraz was set points down in the first set and barely escaped.
So my brain is like: Wait, it’s the best version of Alcaraz right now, barely keeping the lid on Sinner, while the Italian is just returning to the Tour. And when you see it like that, it’s scary… for Alcaraz. I still think he’ll always somehow get a physical edge on Sinner when they’re both at their best on clay, but I also still feel it demands Alcaraz twice the effort to beat Sinner than the other way around. The day Sinner realizes it…

We’re also lucky that their game styles are matching that well because we could be looking at a decade of this Alcaraz-Sinner battle for domination. Also, please, for the love of everything, stop with the comparisons between that rivalry and the Nadal-Federer or Nadal-Djokovic ones. Please. They’re not there yet. Nobody probably ever will be there again. Leave them alone. Again, I get the marketing thinking behind that, but the only thing that’s going to lead to is disappointment (RG last year, anyone?…). Stop. Find them their own lane to thrive on.

Imagine Sinner winning Roland-Garros and Wimbledon back to back. Imagine the scenes. Imagine the locker room scenes.

Imagine Sinner winning Roland-Garros and Wimbledon back to back. Imagine the scenes. Imagine the locker room scenes. I’m French; you cannot blame me for thinking of drama first. Nowadays, it’s a luxury in tennis to have two weeks to train during the season to get better. Jannik Sinner got three months. It’s not that much of a stretch to think it could even be a career game-changer. His former mentor, Riccardo Piatti, told me this year that he was convinced the disaster of COVID-19 sent Sinner to a new level because he spent all this time training. Sinner also showed a lot of emotional stability in Rome, even if he had the easiest setup possible with a return home. Yet, it confirms to me that there are not a lot of things that can shake that guy’s confidence and determination right now. On Sunday, he lost his first match after a 26-win streak: it’s a nice mattress for when the tough times come.

What about Alcaraz, then? Well, it’s unfair, but that comes with the territory: I feel he actually just did what he had to do in order to land in Paris without doubts yelling in his brain. Imagine he had lost that fourth round against Karen Khachanov. Imagine he had lost that final against his nemesis, the guy he couldn’t overthrow despite having three months to do it, the guy who just landed back on Tour. I mean, that would have hurt. So, in Rome, Alcaraz actually acted like the boss: he had to win, and he won. His first Masters 1000 in Rome ensures he has now won all of the clay Masters 1000 at just 22. The Tour also has to thank him for getting that World No.2 back, by the way.

The number of times he has repeated that he had a new approach, was super focused on what mattered, and was no longer projecting his mind onto things that used to make him so nervous he’d lose his game… I mean, sometimes I wonder if it’s 100% true and so problem solved or if he’s at 80% and the rest is manifesting. I’m glad he already identified what he could and couldn’t deal with, pressure-wise.

Let Alcaraz party for his fire to be able to take on Sinner’s ice in the long run

I don’t like his scheduling, you all know that, but I like that most of the time, he’s way wiser than many others about what could undo him. That will surely and hopefully lead to him lightening that schedule in years to come because, contrary to Sinner, Alcaraz always needs to feel joy to play his best. And for this, he needs to be mentally and physically fresh. If it means letting him party for a week, be it. Also, maybe it was a good thing he got injured in Barcelona this year while trying to go through a Nadal-like Sunshine Double to full clay season: Don’t try that, Carlitos, ever again.

Sinner, on the other hand, can go through his (already lighter) schedule like clockwork, the same way Djokovic could: The game is set in marble, the mind can’t spell wandering. Sinner is born with his eyes on the prize. He also has this kind of Federer way of making things look and feel simple. I’m not sure he’s much of an overthinker, this one, when he’s on the rails. He lacks the flair and fire Alcaraz has been built in, but he’s so freaking efficient at what he does, and sometimes ice cold is way scarier than fiery.

Will they already tango with each other again on the last Sunday in Paris?

Actually, that is what draws me into their rivalry, more than their games probably (sorry, Big 4 era put my standards through the sky, and it’s gonna take time to get down to earth): this clear opposition of on-court personalities. Will they already tango with each other again on the last Sunday in Paris? They both should hope so instead of hoping they can be lucky and avoid each other. Why? Because they will get so much better the more they play against each other. The more they see how they need to raise the ceiling to be able to win. That’s the only Big 4 legacy they should care about: you need your frenemies to turn from Mortal to Avengers.

Side note: I feel Lorenzo Musetti would still have deserved a trophy for the quality of his clay season. Final in Monte-Carlo, semi-finals in Madrid, semi-finals in Rome. And when you see the players he got through… I’m curious to see how he will deal with this new status in Paris, but if he gets through that first week…

Gauff Gets Closer, But…

Coco Gauff had a great clay season with two WTA 1000 finals. Coco Gauff had the greatest clay season when you think about where her game was at during the Sunshine Double. Coco Gauff is back to World No.2, while Iga Swiatek has now dropped to #5. She also snatched two wins against Mirra Andreeva through this clay season, and it is very important for her tennis ambitions to keep that kid at bay as long as possible to keep that mental edge.

And yet, two things are coming to put a tiny asterisk to that great stretch on clay: Gauff lost both finals and, even by her own admission, she had to win ugly a lot (for her standards, that is) to get to the last match of the tournament. That’s also the beauty and hope for Roland-Garros: she got to these two finals without playing her best, so imagine what she could do with her A game? She must be wondering when it will decide to show up again this year, though.

Nothing new here regarding her game issues: the serve misfires and the unforced errors count is way too big. Yet, she finds ways to steady the ship most of the time now and she commits to an aggressive game style that will be her only way to win another Grand Slam title. Losing against Aryna Sabalenka in Madrid was nothing to be too mad about for her, but losing to Jasmine Paolini in Rome’s final and for the second time in a row after Stuttgart? That one hurts, especially as Paolini could be on her way in Paris, too.

Yet, I’ve loved Coco’s grit throughout all of this: She struggles, but she fights so hard, her heart on her sleeve, and keeps finding ways. Here’s someone who cuts no corners and will get the most out of her abilities wherever her ceiling ends up being. Can’t fault that, can’t ask for more.

Talking about Jasmine Paolini: what a comeback! She became the first Italian woman to win in Rome in forty years and totally put herself in the best possible position before trying to go a step further than last year at Roland-Garros to put her hands on a first Grand Slam title. Breaking with her long-time coach, Renzo Furlan, might have been the shock her system needed after all. Oh, and she also won the doubles in Rome! When that forehand comes back, it’s with a vengeance.

Rome also put someone else back on track: Zheng Qinwen. And Aryna Sabalenka definitely didn’t see that coming. The Chinese reminded everybody who was the last player to win on the Chatrier: not Iga Swiatek, but Zheng Qinwen, Olympic champion. She really is so good on clay, where she has the time to build the points and impose her tempo. If that elbow leaves her in peace, not many players will want to see her in their draw in Paris this year. The thing with her is that when she gets going, she looks like being on autopilot and ready to beat anybody. It’s before she finds her way to that state that you also feel many players can still undo her. Let’s see if she’ll find the right state of mind in Paris.

Also, I think Rome was way too slow for Sabalenka this year, but when I see the weather predictions for Roland-Garros, I think she might want to get used to slow… Sabalenka is the uncontested World No.1, but I’m sure she’s not happy about her win-loss ratio in finals this year. She clinched the trophy in Miami and Madrid but lost it in Melbourne and Stuttgart. And she couldn’t get to the final in Rome. She’s crazy good but not unbeatable. She knows it, and the field knows it too. She has nearly closed the door on everybody this year, but in this “nearly” resides her doubts and their hopes for Paris.

QUESTION OF THE DAY

You were 64% to say Iga Swiatek wasn’t your favorite for Roland-Garros this year. Wow, you people are cold ;)

BUSINESS/MEDIA

Clay season is still Rafael Nadal season, sorry not sorry. Roland-Garros is getting ready to throw him a party, but before that, Rafa has already thrown himself a little one in the museum of his academy.
Jannik Sinner was everywhere in Rome, showing he and his team were also pretty on it regarding their communication game. From YouTube to the Pope's office. That’s actually what I’m curious about regarding both Sinner and Alcaraz: How they’re building their personal brand and their business. I feel Sinner has been more business-oriented but is now coming for that social media era, while Alcaraz is still more in that image-building era. The competition is also off the court at this level. What do you think? Are you watching Sinner’s YouTube channel?

SOME BREAK POINTS…

Canadian sensation Victoria Mboko played her first WTA final in Parme (WTA 125), losing against Mayar Sherif (6-4, 6-4). A new great performance that pushes near an entry into the Top 100 (#122).
Barbora Krejcikova is back! The Czech should be able to defend her Wimbledon title as she finally started her 2025 season in Rouen on Sunday, losing against Magda Linette (6-3, 6-3). She hadn’t played since the semi-finals of the WTA Finals.
Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard found some solace right on cue for Roland-Garros. Going through a very rough stretch on the Tour, he finally succeeded in getting a few wins and got his hands on the title at the Challengers level in Bordeaux. He will be seeded in Paris. Fun note: Arthur Fils won in Bordeaux last year.
All eyes on Geneva? It’s qualifications week at Roland-Garros, but the tennis attention will be divided as Novak Djokovic is trying to find some more answers at the Geneva Open before Paris. Will he clinch title n°100 in Switzerland after missing it in Miami? Is he in a shape that could make this happen? Nobody really knows anymore. One thing is for sure: Andy Murray won’t be there, and I’m still sad over the end of this weird but fun NolAndy trial. Hamburg could also be fun but with way fewer stakes in Germany.

EDITOR’S PICKS

READ: I’ve finally started a tiny part of my TBR, reading The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel. Have you already read them?

WATCH: Not “The Four Seasons”. I tried to soldier on but had to stop wasting my time at episode 4. I checked the spoilers to see if there was a reason for me to change my mind and continue, but I didn’t find any. Colman Domingo is the only actor being actually enjoyable to watch on that show. The rest is dull and full of clichés. Absolute waste of that cast if you ask me. But it’s making a killing on Netflix, so once again, I’m like, “Why?” about a show or book that ends up being a hit despite being very bad (I, for example, hated the books God of the Woods and The Housemaid).

What are the shows, movies, or books you feel everybody and their auntie loved but you hated?