What a fitting (if predictable) end to this historic season. Jannik Sinner continued his sensational indoor form in yesterday’s season finale, triumphing 7-6, 7-5 over arch-rival Carlos Alcaraz to claim his 2nd successive ATP Finals crown.
The victory will no doubt help soften the blow of losing out on year-end No.1 honours to the Spaniard. The win ensured that he has now won back-to-back ATP Finals titles without dropping a single set, underlining his status as one of the greatest indoor players of any generation (he has now won 31 successive indoor matches). In fact, he is just five wins away from owning the 2nd longest indoor winning streak of all time (McEnroe won 47 straight matches on the carpet from 78-87).
Sinner takes advantage of visibly ailing Alcaraz
Sinner and Alcaraz both played with a grim determination in the opening set, largely dominating on serve. Alcaraz overstretched in one rally and tweaked a hamstring, essentially deciding the course of the match. Alcaraz lost the first-set tiebreak in gung-ho fashion, amassing a raft of unforced errors in his attempt to shorten the exchanges. Sinner then showed a moment of rare weakness, sloppily conceding a break in the very first game of the 2nd set (the first time that Sinner had been broken this week). Sinner broke back in surreal circumstances, slicing a service return into play after a legal double-hit. Alcaraz was caught flat-footed and couldn’t rediscover his momentum. Sinner closed out by breaking Alcaraz again, claiming his 6th title of the season (an incredible number when you consider he missed three months due to that long-forgotten ban). Overall, Sinner and Alcaraz combined for a jaw-dropping 14 titles this calendar year.
Sinner inches towards Alcaraz in meaningless ‘Big Titles’ race
Who is trying to make this ‘Big Titles’ race a thing? I get it, collating all the elevated tournaments- Slams, Masters 1000, Olympics, ATP Finals- into one concrete number is a useful barometer of success. But to suddenly turn this random stat into some hot-ticket race stinks of social-media desperation. The conspiratorial part of my brain suspects that a British analyst has manufactured this ‘race’ to bolster Andy Murray’s place in the pantheon (his 14 Masters titles, 2 Olympic Golds and ATP Finals triumph tend to fade into the background when compared to the ‘Big Three’). In any event, let me play along with this new trend. Sinner’s victory takes him to 11 ‘Big titles’, pulling him to within three of Alcaraz’s total.
Hunting in pairs
There was one stat that really blew me away and illuminated the duo’s dominance of the sport. Since the beginning of the 2024 season, either Sinner or Alcaraz have won 18 of the 19 tournaments in which both have entered. The only man to break this streak was Andrey Rublev! For all his issues delivering on the biggest stages, perennial underachiever Rublev is the only man in the last two years to win a tournament where both Sinner and Alcaraz competed, winning in Madrid last year. Alcaraz and Sinner are clearly levels above the rest of the competition at this point. This stat shows how their mutual participation in an event spurs them on to even greater heights. They know just how important every tournament is in this rivalry, how the No.1 ranking hinges on a match here or there.
The perfect ending
It feels as if this was the perfect way for the season to end. Both men have pushed each other- and the game- forward into exciting, dynamic territory. They shared the slams between them this year; it just seemed right for them to share the glory in Turin. Alcaraz secured the season-ending No.1 with his round-robin whitewash while Sinner obviously went on to claim the title. It feels like Sinner’s people and Alcaraz’s people met at the start of the season and planned how they were going to divvy up the resources, making sure both parties came out with equal compensation (I turned that into a scene from the Sopranos).
Variety is the spice of life
This rivalry has made a joke out of all those scribes who feared the demise of the ‘Big Three’. Let’s face it, the future looked bleak for a while, with the likes of Zverev, Tsitsipas and Rublev failing to cash in on their inheritance. However, I do think the Sinner-Alcaraz dominance of the sport could become tiring in a year or so. They are too congenial, too friendly with each other. The rivalry lacks the type of off-court bite that creates eternal intrigue. 2026 needs to produce a player capable of occasionally disrupting this new status quo.
