Carlos Alcaraz defeated Jannik Sinner in the final of the China Open tournament
The Chinese Open, an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) 500 category tournament with a prize fund of $3.7 million held in Beijing, ended with a brilliant final between the two strongest players in the world at the moment - Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz and the ranking leader Italian Jannik Sinner. Having unexpectedly changed his sneakers during the tiebreaker of the third set, Alcaraz beat Sinner for the third time this season and thereby slightly intensified the dispute for first place in the world classification at the end of the year.
Beijing "five hundred" - a special tournament for Jannik Sinner. After all, it was there that, with victories in the semifinals over Carlos Alcaraz and in the final over Daniil Medvedev, the Italian began his ascent to the top of the world classification last year. In total, since then, Sinner has participated in seventeen individual competitions, in which he won eight titles, twice refused to take the court for health reasons, and suffered seven defeats. Moreover, only Carlos Alcaraz has beaten him more than once in the last twelve months, who proved his advantage in the semi-finals of the Masters in Indian Wells and the French Open.
Alcaraz's temporary decline after a painful defeat to Novak Djokovic in the final of the Paris Olympics did not pass without a trace, and now he is significantly inferior to Sinner in the ranking.
However, it is no coincidence that they shared the titles at the Grand Slam championships this season equally: the Italian retained the Open Championships Australia And USASpaniard - Roland Garros And Wimbledon. Today, these are players who are absolutely equal in class and in their potential capabilities, which was clearly confirmed by their next match - by far the best final in the entire history of the Beijing tournament, which has been held intermittently since 1993.
Alcaraz's tactics were easily predictable. Realizing that it was extremely risky to compete with Sinner in stability, he immediately played as boldly as possible and received quick dividends - he led 3:1, and with the score 5:3 he went out to serve for the first set. However, in those minutes the Spaniard did not have enough safety margin. In the ninth game he gave up his serve, in the twelfth he was unable to take advantage of Sinner’s two double faults, and in the tiebreak, leading 6:4, he did not take advantage of two set points, which the opponent returned with an ace and a great move.
When in the eighth game of the second set, during which it was “even” eight times, Sinner grabbed Alcaraz’s serve, it might have seemed that there was very little left before the end of the match. However, the Spaniard equalized the score - 4:4, after which he took the serve of his discouraged opponent. In the third set, Alcaraz continued to run to the net and shoot into the other half of the court from the baseline, Sinner responded with powerful, tight shots, and in the end, as in the first game, the exchange of serves provided a tiebreaker, which became a real apotheosis of tennis unpredictability.
Sinner reserved the first two rallies, after which the Spaniard suddenly decided to change his shoes. This took a couple of minutes, after which the Italian re-took someone else’s serve, leading 3:0. Considering the fact that Sinner lost only one of his last 19 tiebreaks, the fate of the title looked almost sealed, but it was not to be. Demonstrating absolute fearlessness and tennis of amazing beauty at the highest speeds, Alcaraz managed to win seven points in a row, and with them the match - 6:7 (6:8), 6:4, 7:6 (7:3), stopping Sinner in the third times in a row, to win the fourth title this year and the sixteenth of his career, and also become the first tennis player in history to win 500 category tournaments on three types of surfaces - clay, grass and hard court. (Competitions in this category appeared on the ATP calendar in 2009.)
In addition, Alcaraz slightly aggravated the situation in the dispute for first place in the ranking at the end of the year. According to the results of the China Open, his gap from Sinner was reduced by 170 points and now stands at 2820 points.
This is still a lot, although after the Masters 1000 tournament, which has already started in Shanghai, the Spaniard can get closer to the leader more significantly.
We should also not forget that the final part of the season for Sinner will take place against the backdrop of the consideration of an appeal filed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in his case. It insists on a minimum one-year disqualification of the athlete, who was actually justified after two positive spring doping tests by the decision of the International Tennis Integrity Agency, an independent organization that investigates doping in tennis.
