Clostebol aside, perhaps there is no more accurate description than the one written by Paolo Bertolucci in La Gazzetta dello Sportwhere the former tennis player, six titles for his country in the seventies, aged 73, titled before this last master final in Turin: “Sinner e il potere di avere tuto sotto controllo”. That is, Jannik and the power of having everything under control. And what if the champion has it, who has made victory a habit and as he enters a trance this Sunday, sharpening his eyes under his visor and adding more and more coal to his rope, dynamite in reality, he is taking over a prestigious trophy that crowns a simply majestic season, with eight titles (two of them big), 70 wins and, pity, those who follow and support him, his devotees, regret that stain of the positive detected in Indian Wells. But today he celebrates: double 6-4 (in 1h 24m) against Taylor Fritz, once again surrendering to the evidence. Right now, Sinner is a cyclone.
The number one had not conceded a single set towards the outcome of the tournament and he exercises in the same way, imperial, hitting very hard from the baseline and making the American dizzy, who tries to reply in the hitting and ends up stepping on the banana peel. It is known that good old Taylor has evolved, that from now on we may have to take him more into account in the face of the big competitions – because there are this finalissima of Turin and two months ago in New York—and that his rise to number four corroborates a meritorious and well-deserved climb, but, in the same way, it is known that Sinner is looking like an ogre and that it is going to be a task more than complicated to displace him from the top, or so events say. He has been at the top for five months and the next season will begin with him as the man to beat, with Carlos Alcaraz following in his wake.
If the Murcian, brilliant as he is, works based on sparks, the redhead’s thing is an exercise in linearity and precision, a constant in the final seasons of tournaments. He progresses and progresses, he gets bigger and bigger and at 23 fresh years old, he also begins to take on unusual shapes, despite all the waves he drags due to the massage episode: the cut on his physio’s hand, the massage without a glove and the resulting contamination, fencing. Exonerated from the outset, the appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has left the case in the air, pending a verdict, and in the meantime he is dedicated to continuing to triumph. He is now taking revenge at home, after Novak Djokovic deprived him of the prize a year ago, but right now, there is no other dictate than his. Incontestable on all four sides.
Fritz wants to, that’s why he also wants to redeem himself from the September episode in the US Open final, without any option then, but the North American knows that things are rather complicated and that the stars must align for him to have any chance; He has improved his forehand, but not to that point. From the stands, as the fight progresses, the trick is to check when the pitcher falls and the local tennis player gets the first break. He squeezes and squeezes the idol in the orange atmosphere of the stands, a lot of wig to simulate that curly hair, and in the end the breakage occurs in the seventh game. From there, a Sinner in a tailspin and an adversary exposed to torment, resilient but aware that he can no longer afford another concession, with all the pressure that this entails because otherwise, the story will end too quickly.
It doesn’t matter if he scratches the ball and tries to find tickles there. There is no way, there are no cracks today. On the other hand, Sinner’s shots are acquiring more speed, better direction and more weight, and that usually means that the train is coming, that another break is coming, obtained in the fifth game of the second set. The Inalpi Arena chants to its player: “Olé, olé, olééééé, olééééééé, Sinneeeeer, Sinneeeer!” Italy celebrates, the protagonist rounds off a season of brilliance and a barbaric fact emerges: since 1986, when a robot named Ivan Lendl gobbled up everything in front of him, no master has managed to be crowned without delivering a single set. But there is Jannik, another extraordinary automaton, that praise of control that Bertolucci writes about; the same one who has signed 17 wins against top-10 this year, five more than Alcaraz. Stronger with the strong than any, Sinner destroys and Turin cheers him on. Triumphs and more triumphs, waiting for the final judgment for clostebol.
