I beat the control of the urinary stimulus of Gianni Clerici’s urinary stimulus, which in the Wimbledon 1980 final had been “three hours and fifty -three minutes without peeing”. I raised the sticker to five hours and twenty -nine. There are those who play tennis. Then there is museums. And then there are Sinner and Alcaraz (in rigorous order of the ATP ranking) who invented another sport, where rules, field, balls and rackets remember tennis very closely, but in fact it is another game from what they practice all the others.

The world wanted to see them face to face in a Slam final and they did not betray. Five and a half hours of barrels and embroidery, of bedside tables and slaps, of cultured opportunities and shaded match points, French disguised as Spanish and fair play. The longest final in the history of Roland Garros, for some also the most beautiful, for us the most bitter.

Sinner had it on his hand, on two occasions. With the break in the start of the third set after winning the first two, and then in the fourth with those three consecutive matches on the Carlitos service. A long -run straight, an aggressive background response outside and a straight in backward on the tape: the regrets are all there.

The Ko which is a company

We will talk about a service that has betrayed (few first first ones, especially against someone like Alcaraz), a straight a little intermittently, of the tenth defeat in a decisive set in Slam, on sixteen encounters played, and the fifth consecutive Ko against Carlitos, the second with match point in favor (the first at the US Open 2022).

But the truth is that, if you lose an ending in which you have been three times to a “15” from the triumph and you have conquered in total two points more than your opponent who won it (193 to 191 for the blue), it means that you played the final really well and that nine times out of ten if the cup of the mosquettiers will be tidy.

The comparison with Roger

At this moment it is not a great consolation Jannik, but also Roger Federer, master of Otto Wimbledon, has lost the 2019 final on the London meadows with two consecutive matches points and moreover on his service. Roger was another age, but the burden of the burden is the same. Yet, that same evening team and Swiss family, however, organized a party to exorcise that atrocious disappointment. First turn page, the better it is.

The time of honors on French land will come. Maybe Andre Agassi, great ceremonies, reminded him that he lost not one but two finals on that field, and all favored. And that then that cup managed to raise it, reassembling right from two sets below.

The Grand Slam dream has also vanished with Paris, however there are numerous goals of which Sinner must be proud. Twenty consecutive victories in the majors and eight finals in the last eight tournaments played are a big three roller, but above all it has shown that he has the spirit of the great fighters. With the energies to the light, the weight of the evaporated matches points and an alcaraz that in that fifth set would have given 6-1 to all the other top ten, none excluded, Jannik with the last sgasata of the champion slightly cannot take it home: from 3-5 to 6-5. At that precise moment the hero of Murcia has returned to play as we play only in heaven and there was nothing more to do. But he had to win the Spaniard, he did not miss Sinner.

Three months of stop, then final at the Foro Italico and sumptuous final on the Philippe Chatrier lost for nothing: Jannik is a Martian and I am sure it will start even stronger. And, please, we no longer give voice to those who would like to abolish the three out of five sets: history and its myths do not touch each other.

Alcaraz in the footsteps of Rafa

On earth the pupil of Juan Carlos Ferrero knows how to touch the peaks of Nadalian Memory and the footprint of the Majorcan champion is there on Philippe Chatrier not by chance. After the “Federer moments”, described by that genius of David Foster Wallace, now there are the “Alcaraz moments”, that is, those moments in which you realize that you have seen something that, physics books in hand, it is not humanly possible to perform. Carlitos, pardoned in the fourth set, pulled out those moments in the two decisive tie-breaks.

Save yourself from three consecutive matches point happens to you once in the whole career, if you are good and lucky. And if Sinner’s reverse response had found the crossing of the lines today we would write differently. Yet, with the potential and the arsenal of which Carlitos has, it is not clear why it should not win at least 7 or 8 more Roland Garros. It seems born to dominate on red. Attack, defense, dampened and a straight that can be both iron and feather and that, when playing in favor of a score, becomes close from illegal to be. He went to a whisker from losing only because on the other side of the net there was Sinner. It is true that the number 1 in the world has shots and steel head, but Alcaraz is no different even from a mental point of view. Of his five Slam titles on the bulletin board, three won them by defeating two phenomena in the final such as Djokovic (Wimbledon 2023 and 2024) and Jannik.

It was the final of the finals and regrets, with the awareness, however, that we will see others with the same protagonists and with alternate results. Also knowing that Italian tennis is up there and looks at all from above. The triumphs of Errani-Paolini in the women’s double and Errani-Vavassori in the mixture were added to the Musetti semifinal and to the final of Sinner. The first success by Coach by Francesca Schiavone should not be forgotten, who led to the victory of the Juniores scoreboard, in his Paris, the Austrian class 2008 Lilli Tagger, also with the reverse to one hand. And who he said that it should not be moved with tennis …