He let himself fall to the ground, closing his eyes for a moment as if to enjoy the moment and keep it all to himself as he had done at the 2024 Australian Open, the first major trophy won in his career. In the highly anticipated epilogue of the ATP Finals, Jannik Sinner he beat Carlos Alcaraz in two sets and confirmed himself as Master of tennis for the second consecutive year in “his” Turin, thus moving to just 550 points behind his Spanish rival who ends the year as No. 1. The South Tyrolean tennis player (who will not participate in the Davis Cup Final 8 in Bologna this week) closes an absolute phenomenon season with his sixth title in “only” 12 tournaments played due to the suspension due to the Clostebol affair which kept him away from the fields for three months. The Italian became the first tennis player since 1991 to simultaneously dominate the service and return performance rankings in the same season, winning the 92% and the 33% of games. Let’s analyze together the tactical key of the final against Alcaraz and his 2025 records.
Sinner’s second serve and Alcaraz’s errors at the net: the analysis of the Turin final
“We definitely noticed some problems after the US Open, especially with the serve. We changed the movement, we changed the rhythm. He served really well from Shanghai up to here.”. With this phrase during the conference of the Turin triumph, the coach Simone Vagnozzi he perfectly photographed the improvements in the service of his South Tyrolean student closed the ATP Finals with only one serve lost in the entire tournament (at the beginning of the second set against Alcaraz). Growth was also seen with the second serve: precisely with this fundamental he managed to cancel the set point to the Spaniard at 5-6 in the first set. A missile a 187 km/h. “Even if I had made a mistake I know I would have done the right thing, because before I had always lost the point by playing conservatively.” Sinner himself explained the risk in this way in front of journalists.
If the blue showed a granite solidity from baselinestrengthened by its unbeaten record against indoor courts (he hasn’t lost for two years, 31 games in total), Alcaraz seemed tactically confused at timesnet of the muscle strain in his right thigh for which he requested a Medical Timeout at the end of the first set. His predisposition for variation, which often destroys and disorientates his opponents, was a boomerang on the concrete of the Inalpi Arena: of the 15 runs to the net only 7 led to a point because, in most cases, not preceded by “definitive” accelerations. As if there was still a piece missing in the construction of his game under one roof. Translated: there is ample room for improvement in the European indoor season, a field where even his idol Rafael Nadal has never achieved great satisfaction (he is the only one of the Big Three to have never won the ATP Finals).
The emblematic statistic of Sinner’s season and the records at the ATP Finals
To summarize Sinner’s dream 2025 it would be enough to cite this statistic: the blue became the first player since 1991 (year from which the ATP began collecting this data) to have simultaneously won more service games and more return games than the entire major circuit in the same seasonwith a percentage of 92% and 33% respectively (Alcaraz, for example, won only 87% of games with his own serve). A dominance that allowed him to confirm himself as champion at the Australian Open in January and, having overcome the stoppage due to the Clostebol affair, to become the first Italian in history to triumph in the temple of tennis at Wimbledon. Thanks to the success in Turin, a tournament second in importance only to the Slams, he joined the legends John McEnroe (3 in New York) and Boris Becker (2 in Frankfurt) among the only men to have won the ATP Finals several times in their homeland, among other things without losing sets as done last year and as only McEnroe himself and Ivan Lendl did in the 1980s. It’s also the 9th tennis player in history to do so back to back at the Masters tournament.
What’s missing from Sinner’s palmarès?
“Land will be the big goal next year”. Darren Cahill, spiritual guide and tennis father of Sinner (the Australian should continue in the Italian’s box for another year), has outlined the agenda for 2026, further raising the bar of a career already legendary at 24 years old. If there is a time of year where Jannik can still make the leap in quality it is claya surface on which he won only one title (250) in Umag in 2022. It’s true, he was only one point away (three times in a row) from winning Roland Garros, in the most spectacular final of the year against Alcaraz, but it is precisely and only on clay (the slowest surface par excellence) that the gap with his rival is still evident, especially in instinctive plays and variations. But as the red-haired phenomenon taught us there are no limits in tennis…
