They are in a hurry, this younger group of tennis stars, with no interest in waiting their turn to take over their sport, or respecting their elders.
On a warm Sunday evening at Rod Laver Arena, Jannik Sinner, the fast-rising 22-year-old Italian star, became the latest member of the “next generation” to win a Grand Slam title.
He recovered from two sets down to beat Daniil Medvedev 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 to win the Australian Open title in his first match in one of the match’s final clashes. In doing so, he became only the second player under 23 in the Open Era to win a Grand Slam final from two sets down, after Bjorn Borg (Roland-Garros, 1974). He is only the eighth to do so.
“It’s the happy Slam,” Sinner said, using the nickname Roger Federer gave at the Australian Open as he held the big silver trophy. His thoughts then turn to the chef and restaurateur from the mountainous area of north-eastern Italy who raised him, those who, according to him, gave him the opportunity to choose his sport and follow his dream of him. “Where my parents are, it’s -20 degrees in the morning!”
Better, he said, to run on the tennis courts in the Australian summer – and become the youngest man to win the Australian Open since Djokovic in 2008.
Coming into the final Medvedev didn’t have much to pin his hopes on against Sinner, who has long been touted for his greatness and whose speed and power seemed to come together at just the right moment. Medvedev had lost his last three matches against Sinner. He had spent about 20 hours on the court, including two five-set marathons, one of which ended at 3:40 a.m. during the first week. Sinner had scored his equalizer, beating 10-time champion Novak Djokovic in the semifinals.
But Medvedev entered the field with a clear advantage. I’ve been on this stage before. This was his third Australian Open final and the sixth time he had played for a Grand Slam title. It was Sinner’s first and, for the first two sets, he played like this: tense in his body language, hesitant in his movements, uncertain in his shot, a shadow of the player he had been in the previous two weeks.
Trying to stay in the match in the third set, Sinner took advantage of a tired Medvedev to reduce his deficit as Rod Laver Arena lit up for the first time all night: the screaming Italians in the crowd finally had something to shout about . Suddenly Medvedev seemed to have visions of the 2022 final, as he pulled out a two-set lead over that irresistible force of tennis, a rising Rafael Nadal.
The sinner who emerged on Sunday night was something else.
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First, he stopped making mistakes on basic shots, especially his backhand, which Medvedev started testing in the first game and never stopped. Then he began to struggle for points with Medvedev’s serve, forcing him to further dip into his energy reserves, which were initially low after two weeks of marathon matches.
And then, with the score tied for the first time in nearly three hours, Sinner finally began firing the lasers from the baseline that had defeated his six previous opponents, including arguably the greatest of all time.

Jannik Sinner was in his first Grand Slam final (David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)
The decisive break came in the sixth game of the fifth set, according to a pattern that Medvedev had already known in the last hour. Sinner jumped on his softened second serve to bring him back into the court and, two shots later, hit a crosscourt forehand that Medvedev could do nothing but watch whiz by.
Three matches later, Sinner became the first Italian to win the Australian Open in tennis’ modern era, finishing it with a final forehand down the line and collapsing on his back as he watched it burn at the back of the court. Medvedev became the first man to lose a two-set lead in a Grand Slam final twice.
“You fought until the end, you managed to raise your level,” Medvedev told Sinner when it was all over and he was holding the second place trophy for the third time. “It always hurts to lose in the final, but losing in the final is probably better than losing before. “I’m proud of myself and I’ll try harder next time.”

Daniil Medvedev was in his sixth Grand Slam final and lost five (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
For much of the last two years, Carlos Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish sensation, has dominated the men’s tennis buzz by living up to the hype of becoming the sport’s next big thing. But as Alcaraz rocketed to the top of the rankings, becoming in 2022 the youngest man to become world No. 1 since the inception of the modern ranking system, Sinner preached the value of patience and process.
His time would come, he promised, but he was different from Alcaraz, someone who needed to improve one step at a time and methodically progress into the deeper stages of tournaments and learn to play on the sport’s biggest stages. Everyone was in a hurry for him and Alcaraz to face each other and start a new rivalry in the spirit of Federer-Nadal or Nadal-Djokovic.
Everything in its time, he said. That moment may well have come Sunday night, in part because as he watched the legends of the sport to learn how they trained and prepared, he was also gaining from Alcaraz the belief that he too could beat the best players as well, even if he was young.
Very little in sport happens by chance, much less the creation of a Grand Slam champion. Tennis is an individual sport, but sometimes countries produce waves of top players. A dozen years ago, Spain was a tennis queen, winning the Davis Cup, the sport’s top national competition, four times in eight years, with Nadal leading the way.
Italian tennis was a disaster, without many top players and few talents in the pipeline. Around that time, the country’s tennis federation developed a plan to become a destination for junior and lower-level professional tournaments. This has allowed players such as Sinner, Lorenzo Musetti, Matteo Arnaldi and others supported by the federation to gain experience competing at a high level without incurring the costs of international travel.
“It’s amazing the support I’ve received,” Sinner said.
However, there is no sure formula for creating a Grand Slam champion, especially someone who makes a different sound when he hits a tennis ball with his racket, a sort of pop that lets his opponent know that the ball is coming fast towards him. he.
There is a very basic strategy in tennis that anyone who has played or watched the sport even a handful of times will know well. It basically boils down to standing on the baseline and repeatedly hitting the ball to your opponent’s backhand until you can demonstrate that your backhand is strong enough to withstand the pressure. At that point you can start exacting punishment because the player knows what is happening.
That’s plan A. It often doesn’t work very well in Grand Slam finals because the best players in the world can handle pretty much any shot if they know what’s coming, even if their backhands aren’t that great.
In Medvedev’s case it worked for a long time, with Sinner unable to manage the stress of the exchanges and the moment. But Sinner begins to revive with Medvedev serving for the second set at 5-1. Sinner broke it, then nearly broke it again, at 5-3, and entered the third set believing he had a chance.
As Sinner prepared his return, Darren Cahill, one of Sinner’s trainers, stopped in his box and yelled, “He’s tired,” and reminded Sinner to have the mentality of his champion.
“Once you get to the fourth and fifth sets, it’s about what you have inside,” Cahill said.
Medvedev still had something, but he was going fast, and was desperate to avoid his fourth five-set match of a tournament when he spent more time on court than almost anyone in Grand Slam history, in Cahill’s words, going “to hell”. and back” to get within two points of beating the title.
This was the best he would get. There was another of the game’s young talents asking him to give in.
“You live with this kind of movement,” Sinner said. “You don’t even realize how fast you’re moving.”
(Top photo: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)