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Journalism of Courage
The men’s tennis season of 2025 will go down in the history books as the year when the cream definitively rose to the top. It has been evident for a while now but Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have clearly separated themselves from the rest of the field. If there are six significant honours to win during the ATP season – Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, US Open, Year-end No 1, and ATP Finals title – it was divided equally between the two. They split the four Majors this year with Spaniard winning at Roland Garros and in New York while Sinner triumphed at Rod Laver Arena and the hallowed Center Court in London. And last week, Alcaraz confirmed the year-end No. 1 ranking, while Sinner got the year-end Finals title, clinching it for the second year in a row without dropping a set.
For context: the World No. 3, Alexander Zverev, has less than half the ranking points of the No. 2. The subtle ways in which they one-up each other look set to continue to define the biggest tournaments in the sport.
But one incredible stat emerged last night after Sinner triumphed in Turin. The Spaniard and Italian have now met 16 times officially on the ATP Tour (not including exhibitions and challenger events – where they first met in 2019 at the Ferroro Challenger Open). Sinner has some catching up to do in terms of match wins. He now trails 6-10. But the sense that every time they go up against each other these days, it feels like an incredibly tight contest, is proved by this stunning number.
— Sinner and Alcaraz have now played a total of 3302 points, and it’s a dead heat: Alcaraz: 1651 points and Sinner: 1651 points.
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The ATP Finals title clash was determined by incredibly small margins with Sinner winning 7-6 (4), 7-5 and there were just eight points separating the two, with the Italian winning 78 and Alcaraz claiming 72. In fact, 11 out of the 16 matches have been decided by a difference of 15 points or fewer. The closest were their two Roland Garros five-setters in the last two years, and on both occasions Alcaraz won while Sinner edged the total points. In 2024, during the semifinal, the difference was two points while their all-time great final this year was edged by Alcaraz but Sinner won one point more than his opponent.
https://twitter.com/BastienFachan/status/1990171482434244788 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
This year also saw them meet exclusively in finals of tournaments. According to Opta, Alcaraz and Sinner are the first pair to meet in the final at 3+ Grand Slam events and the ATP Finals in the same season since 1970.
“The facts are they’re a level above everyone,” Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime said this week, after losing to both of them over the course of the tournament in Turin. “The ranking doesn’t lie. They’re the two best players. That’s the facts. Different game styles, but both put extreme pressure on their opponent in different ways. They keep showing up and playing good, so credit to them.”
