Sinner, Jannik (2001- )

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      Sinner Beats Alcaraz in a Match Befitting Wimbledon’s Centre Court

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      The young talents made their Centre Court debuts hours after Wimbledon celebrated the main stage’s 100th anniversary, and they provided a foil to a contentious match the day before.WIMBLEDON, England — It was a long weekend full of contrasts at the All England Club.The first Sunday of the tournament has traditionally been a day of rest at Wimbledon, where they once did not play on Sundays at all.But time rumbles on, and sometimes rolls right over tradition. Wimbledon has now joined the other Grand Slam tournaments by scheduling matches on every day available.This year, the added entertainment on the first Sunday was more a pleasure for the senses than the regular fare on Saturday, when Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas put on a mutually bratty display that you could not take your eyes off, frequently for the wrong reasons.Sunday restored calm and decorum as two other luminous young talents, Jannik Sinner of Italy and Carlos Alcaraz of Spain, took to the most famous showplace in tennis just a couple of hours after the ceremony and parade of champions that commemorated the 100th anniversary of Centre Court.While Kyrgios swore and berated the chair umpire on No. 1 Court and Tsitsipas knocked a ball angrily into the crowd and tried to nail shots directly at his opponent, Sinner and Alcaraz showed why they were the ones who got trusted with an assignment on Centre Court even though neither had ever played there.Sinner kept Alcaraz stretching and lunging.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThey are talented beyond their years but also classy beyond their years as they demonstrated throughout Sunday’s fourth-round duel, won, 6-1, 6-4, 6-7 (8), 6-3, by the 20-year-old Sinner over the 19-year-old Alcaraz.At one point, Sinner slipped and fell hard on his chest while chasing down an Alcaraz drop shot, and Alcaraz came hustling forward to offer him an encouraging fist bump after he rose to his big feet.Are they the future of men’s tennis? It certainly looks that way, and they have been the present of the game at times, upsetting their elders, winning tour titles and reaching the quarterfinals at Grand Slam tournaments. But there are no guarantees. Injuries, big money and new arrivals can quickly change the pecking order.“I think what we showed today, it’s a great level of tennis, great attitude from both of us,” Sinner said. “There are still so many other players who are playing incredible tennis. For sure, we are the two youngest at the moment. So let’s see. I don’t know in the future what’s going to happen. I think it’s just great for tennis to have also some new names, new players.”This has been a most unusual Wimbledon with the No. 1-ranked Daniil Medvedev and his fellow Russians barred from playing because of the war in Ukraine; the new No. 2, Alexander Zverev of Germany, out after major ankle surgery; and three other leading grass-court players — Matteo Berrettini of Italy, Marin Cilic of Croatia and Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain — withdrawing after testing positive for the coronavirus.There were big windows of opportunity in the draw, and of the 16 players in the men’s fourth round, only two — Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal — had been to even the semifinals of a Grand Slam singles tournament. Sinner will now face Djokovic, the three-time defending champion at Wimbledon, in the quarterfinals after Djokovic defeated Tim van Rijthoven, a late-blooming Dutch wild-card entrant, 6-2, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, on Sunday night.Though seeded 10th at Wimbledon, Sinner had never won a match on grass on the main tour until arriving at the All England Club, but it was difficult to understand why as he navigated the grass and generated huge punching power with his groundstrokes against Alcaraz off shots hit from all different kinds of heights. Sinner was the more consistent force on Sunday, but he was also often the one doing the dictating against one of the most explosive movers and hitters in the men’s game.Sinner, who had lost his only previous tour-level match against Alcaraz, kept him stretching and lunging and turned Alcaraz’s service games into gantlets by repeatedly putting forceful returns at his feet and obliging him to flick half-volleys while leaning back just to stay in the point.“For me, Jannik played incredibly well,” said Alcaraz, the higher seed at No. 5.The elastic Alcaraz was often spectacular (he cannot help himself) but also irregular: misfiring repeatedly on his signature drop shots and failing to convert any of his seven break points while Sinner cashed in on four of his 12.That seemed to be the key statistic. Alcaraz went for too much too often with his groundstrokes. The temptation to end the exchange was understandable. Sinner was setting a torrid pace from the baseline, but it was a testament to Alcaraz’s talent and competitive fire that he turned a potential straight-sets defeat into something much more compelling.He rallied from 0-40 to hold serve in the first game of the third set and then fought off two match points in the tiebreaker before making the shot of the day at 8-8: a sharply angled forehand half-volley drop shot winner off a full-force backhand pass down the line from Sinner that would have finished off just about any other point.Alcaraz raised an arm and pumped up the crowd, which did not need much encouragement, and then closed out the set.But to Sinner’s credit, Alcaraz could not close out the comeback, double-faulting to lose his serve in the fourth game of the fourth set, and despite saving three more match points on his serve in the eighth game, he could not prevent Sinner from serving out the match.Sinner has made a smart hire this summer, employing Darren Cahill, a former player, veteran coach and ESPN analyst, as a grass-court consultant. Cahill, between his daily commentary duties, is helping him prepare for the matches, and they clearly prepared well for Alcaraz as Sinner handled the big stage and big moment with just a bit more sang-froid.“I need to improve my mental stability,” said Alcaraz, who is having a breakout season. “Today and in many matches, I’ve had lots of highs and lows, moments of playing well and playing badly. I have to manage the nerves better. It cost me some today.”So, he conceded, did the Centre Court assignment.“It’s not so much the court itself, or the silence,” he said, referring to the classic quiet between points.“It was not so silent,” he said with a grin. “But it’s more knowing all the story behind this court. You are playing and knowing all the historic matches that were played there that were so important to the game. That’s what weighed on me.”The parade of Wimbledon winners certainly underscored the point on this special Sunday, as retired champions like Billie Jean King and Rod Laver shared the grass with active champions like Nadal, Djokovic, Andy Murray and Venus Williams and with champions on hiatus like the surprise guest Roger Federer.“For me it was a privilege today to go for the first time there in the Centre Court,” Sinner said.He made the most of it, and together, he and Alcaraz did the grand occasion justice. More

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      ATP Finals Create a Buzz in Turin, but Will Italy’s Players Follow?

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      Turin is a smaller stage than the prestigious event had in London, but the enthusiasm was real, especially for the young Italian stars Jannik Sinner and Matteo Berrettini.TURIN, Italy — There is a massive world map in the atrium of the five-star hotel in Turin where the leading players stayed during the ATP Finals that ended Sunday.It was not the ideal metaphor. Though men’s tennis is undoubtedly global, with tournaments on six continents (no Antarctica for now), it is not at the moment an intercontinental sport at the top.As the 2021 tour season ends, the top 10 in singles is exclusively European: from 34-year-old Novak Djokovic of Serbia at No. 1 to 20-year-old Jannik Sinner of Italy at No. 10.Though there were some men’s tour executives who believed that it would have been a smarter growth strategy and safer financial decision to take the ATP Finals elsewhere — see Tokyo or Singapore — it is certainly in tune with the times that the tour’s year-end championship remained in Europe.The surprise was that it came to Turin. The ATP Finals were in London at the O2 Arena from 2009 to 2020, serving as an annual second helping of big-time tennis for a major city and major media hub that already had Wimbledon.But Turin, the new host for a five-year run, is a very different and more risky play. Though Turin is the capital of Italy’s Piedmont region, it is only the country’s fourth most populous city behind Rome, Milan and Naples. It has a tennis culture — clubs and courts are common — but does not have a regular men’s or women’s tour event and has never produced a major tennis star, although Lorenzo Sonego, 26, a Turin native currently ranked 27th, is training and playing hard to change that (he has victories over Djokovic and the 2020 U.S. Open champion Dominic Thiem).A mascot posed at the ATP Finals fan village.Alessandro Di Marco/EPA, via ShutterstockFiat, the carmaker that once dominated the city, has moved on, leaving an economic void. Turin has its strengths: fine wine and food, an Egyptian museum, an elegant city center and the soccer club Juventus. But what gave it the edge for indoor tennis was the Pala Alpitour, the largest, most up-to-date indoor arena in Italy. It was built to host ice hockey at the Winter Olympics in 2006, and Turin’s leaders were eager to rekindle the Olympic spirit and raise the city’s international profile with another significant sports event.That may be more challenging than they think. The ATP Finals is arguably the most prestigious annual men’s tennis event outside the four Grand Slam tournaments. Only the top eight men qualify in singles, and it is a goal and talking point throughout the season as well as one of the biggest paydays and ranking boosts available. An undefeated champion gets 1,500 ranking points: more than any tournament outside the Grand Slam events, whose champions get 2,000.But the ATP Finals are still nowhere near as big a fishbowl. Winning is important for a champion’s legacy but not essential. Rafael Nadal has never managed it, yet no one is about to take him off the short list of the game’s greatest players.Three of the past five ATP Finals champions — Grigor Dimitrov, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev, who won in 2018 and again on Sunday — have yet to win a Grand Slam title.But with Nadal, Thiem and Roger Federer out of action for extended periods as they recover from significant injuries, Turin got the best of what was available. No. 1 Djokovic, No. 2 Daniil Medvedev and No. 3 Zverev all reached the semifinals after coming through their round-robin groups, and all expressed satisfaction with their new playground even if Medvedev did grumpily and briefly compare it to a minor-league “challenger” event during his opening match when he had trouble getting the balls delivered to him at the pace he prefers before serving.There were certainly more significant issues, some beyond organizers’ control. The coronavirus pandemic made advance planning a challenge. Prize money was cut in half — from $14.5 million to $7.25 million — largely because of the reduced arena capacity. Though Turin had been projecting a 75 percent limit, the Italian authorities ultimately settled on 60 percent, which turned away hundreds of fans on short notice. Once inside, there were long lines and a shortage of concessions (the sponsors seemed to be doing just fine).But the enthusiasm was real and audible, even with just over 7,600 fans in the stands. It was real in Turin’s historic center as well, where shopkeepers put tennis rackets in their showcases and windows and the city turned Piazza San Carlo into a tennis village with big video screens and a small-scale court.Sinner signed autographs for fans in front of the Principi di Piemonte hotel in Turin.Jessica Pasqualon/EPA, via ShutterstockIs it better to take an event like the ATP Finals to a world city where it will be at most a sideshow or to bring it to a more modest place like Turin where it can and likely will dominate?Option No. 2 has its charms.“The Turin idea was that the city would really embrace the event, and we would have done even more if there had not been Covid,” said Andrea Gaudenzi, the chairman of the ATP Tour. “Overall, I think we have to improve a few things, especially in the fan experience outside the arena when you come without the corporate ticket. But overall, I’m personally pleased with the on-court experience.”The potential downside is that you create waves in a small pond instead of ripples in vaster uncharted waters that might help grow the game long term. With the Big Three nearing the end of their careers, men’s tennis is surely in for a lull.But after all the empty stadiums of the pandemic, buzz is an even larger virtue, and Italy is abuzz over tennis and rightly so. When Turin and the Italian Tennis Federation began lobbying for the ATP Finals in 2018, Sinner and Matteo Berrettini had not yet broken through (and Gaudenzi, a former Italian star, had not yet become chairman of the ATP).As it turned out, Berrettini, 25, a Wimbledon finalist this year, qualified directly for Turin and when he had to withdraw after one match with an abdominal injury, Sinner was ready to step in as the alternate. The atmosphere when he played was the best of the week.“We never could have imagined that two Italian players would take part in the first ATP Finals in Turin,” said Angelo Binaghi, president of the Italian Tennis Federation.That is quite a bonus, and in light of Sinner’s and Berrettini’s youth and talent, it may not be a one-time bonus. More

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      The Next Generation of Men’s Tennis

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      Fixing this and that in their games, these 10 players could join the elite.Novak Djokovic dominated men’s tennis this year, but with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal wearing down physically, 2021 also signaled a changing of the guard: Stefanos Tsitsipas reached the French Open final; Matteo Berrettini reached the Wimbledon final; Alexander Zverev won the Olympic gold medal; and Daniil Medvedev reached the Australian Open final and then won the United States Open. All are 25 or younger.Now a new crop of youngsters, 24 and under, is charging up the rankings, but some will stall.To separate themselves from their peers, each must refine his game; these 10 are most likely to join the sport’s elite, if they improve one aspect of their game. Following is an assessment of each player from coaches, analysts and former professionals. Rankings are through Thursday.Casper RuudNorway, age 22; world ranking: 8Ruud’s speed and all-around game shine on clay, said Tom Shimada, a coach at the Van Der Meer Tennis Academy in South Carolina, “but now he has to figure out how to play on the quicker services.”Ruud needs more free points on serve, said Jimmy Arias, director of the IMG Academy’s tennis program in Florida and a Tennis Channel analyst. “He still has to grind on his serve and in three-of-five set tournaments that makes it difficult.”Patrick McEnroe, a director of the John McEnroe Tennis Academy in New York and an analyst for ESPN, was pleasantly surprised by Ruud’s serves and instead feels Ruud needs “more firepower on his forehand, whether it’s more power or more spin.”Christian Bruna/EPA, via ShutterstockHubert HurkaczPoland, age 24; ranking: 9Hurkacz turned heads with his Miami Open win this year, but Arias said he needed to retain consistency because he sometimes lost to lesser players.McEnroe sees that as a lack of assertiveness despite his rise in the rankings: “He needs to be more aggressive with his shots, but also with his attitude. He could use a little swagger.”Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesJannik SinnerItaly, age 20; ranking: 11Sinner himself said he could not pick just one thing to improve. “I’m only 20 years old; I have to improve everything,” he said. “I have to improve the serve, my volleys and mixing up my game as well.”McEnroe and Arias said he needed variety and creativity in his approach. “He’s missing the subtleties of the game,” McEnroe said, “when to hit the ball at 60 percent or to slice it down the middle and make the other guy come up with something.”Carmen Mandato/Getty Images Felix Auger-AliassimeCanada, age 21; ranking: 12He sometimes gets tight, leading to service breaks at crucial moments. “He will just hand you a service break with two double faults and two inexplicable first-ball errors,” Arias said.McEnroe said Auger-Aliassime was a true student of the game, so he sometimes overthinks things. “He’s looking for the perfect shot, so he makes errors,” McEnroe said. “He needs to relax, just let it go and play with more freedom, trusting his athleticism.”Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesDenis ShapovalovCanada, age 22; ranking: 13Shapovalov has been captivating fans since he shocked Nadal as an 18-year-old at the 2017 Canadian Open, but Shapovalov’s power and style can work to his detriment. “He has tremendous weapons, but he’s going for a lot,” Shimada said. Trying to blast winners is “a tough way to consistently beat the guys who play unbelievable defense.”McEnroe said Shapovalov needed more high-percentage shots on his service return: “He tends to take big swings and has to be more consistent on the return, playing smart, neutral or even defensive shots to get in the rally.”Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesReilly OpelkaUnited States, age 24; ranking: 26Opelka needs confidence. “To reach the next level will require an evolution of his mind-set,” Shimada saidArias recalled watching Opelka double fault twice in a row in Atlanta this summer, then mutter repeatedly to himself, “I should have played team sports.”McEnroe said that at 6-foot-11, Opelka needed to maximize his size and power, going bigger on forehands, returns and serves. “He jokes about not wanting to be a ‘serve-bot,’ but he should play like one more often,” McEnroe said. “To beat the top players, he has to overpower them.”Scott Taetsch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSebastian KordaUnited States, age 21; ranking: 38Korda soared from 119th this year, but his continued climb requires a better serve, Shimada said, citing his loss to Karen Khachanov at Wimbledon, where Korda was broken seven times in the fifth set as Exhibit A.“You can’t have that happen,” McEnroe said. “The serve has to get better, and he needs to get stronger and impose himself more.”Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesCarlos AlcarazSpain, age 18; ranking: 40Even for this article, which is essentially nit-picking, Arias, McEnroe and Shimada were stumped when it came to the dynamic Alcaraz, who jumped in the rankings from 141 this year.“If I had to pick one guy where you can’t come up with one thing, it’s Alcaraz,” McEnroe said. “He can do it all, and he has moxie.”Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressJenson BrooksbyUnited States, age 21; ranking: 56He believes he needs to commit to being physical and running through the ball in points to avoid going on the defensive. “That’s what I’m working on the most,” Brooksby said.While Shimada, McEnroe and Arias are dazzled by his movement and feel, and his unusual strokes and style, they said his big problem was really his serve.“For his size, [6-foot-4], his serve is mediocre at best,” McEnroe said.He will need a dangerous serve to win a major, but if he improves there, Arias said, look out.“With a bigger serve, he could be the American Daniil Medvedev.”Grant Halverson/Getty ImagesLorenzo MusettiItaly, age 19; ranking: 65He is straightforward in his self-analysis. “I need to improve my serve, but especially my return and especially on hard courts,” said Musetti, a clay-court specialist. “With my one-handed backhand, I need to work on stepping to the ball.”Give him points for self-awareness. “He just doesn’t do enough with the serve,” Shimada said, while Arias said that with a one-handed backhand, Musetti needed to at least get to neutral on returns (hit them harder so he does not start rallies at a disadvantage).McEnroe said Musetti “doesn’t step in as naturally as some other guys and needs to take the ball a little earlier.” More

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      Young Italian Men Are Taking Over the French Open. They Have No Idea Why.

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      Italy has 10 players in the top 100, the most ever, and two 19-year-olds who look like major stars in the making. Just don’t ask them what’s going on.PARIS — The Grand Slam event currently underway may be called the French Open. The overwhelming favorite in men’s singles is from Spain. But this tournament, and perhaps even the future of men’s tennis, suddenly feels very Italian.That may sound strange, especially to the Italians, who have never produced a world No. 1. But on Thursday, a pair of 19-year-olds, Jannik Sinner, the surprise quarterfinalist at Roland Garros last year, and Lorenzo Musetti, who is playing in his first Grand Slam tournament, stormed into the final 32. So did Matteo Berrettini, 25, who is seeded ninth. They joined the 34-year-old veteran Fabio Fognini, the No. 27 seed, who has crushed his first two opponents and serves as the spiritual leader for the younger set driving this unprecedented Italian charge.“It’s something we are not used to,” Berrettini said after pummeling Federico Coria of Argentina, 6-3, 6-3, 6-2, Thursday. “Nobody is used to it.”Tennis may be the ultimate individual sport, but countries sometimes produce waves of top players. Germans (Boris Becker, Steffi Graf) had their day in the late 1980s. Americans (Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Michael Chang) were mainstays of the top 10 in the 1990s. A decade ago, Spain was tennis royalty, winning the Davis Cup, the sport’s leading national competition, four times in eight years, with Rafael Nadal leading the way.If a country produces a generational star, it stands to reason more will follow. But as many times as not, countries produce a champion, and then the tennis cupboard is largely empty. There are no hot young Swiss players in the top 100 ready to fill Roger Federer’s shoes. Spain’s youngest player in the top 40, Pablo Carreño Busta, is 29.“You think the more good players you have from a nation they can groom the next generation, but then the chain breaks,” said Andrea Gaudenzi of Italy, a top 20 player in the 1990s who now leads the ATP Tour.Jannik Sinner made the quarterfinals of last year’s French Open and beat a fellow Italian, Gianluca Mager, to advance to the third round this year.Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSo what has made Italy so good at this moment in men’s tennis history? Asking that is a bit like asking for directions in Rome — plenty of possible answers, none seemingly any better than the rest.Even the smartest tennis minds do not really know how to develop a phenomenal tennis player, much less several of them simultaneously. At its highest level, the game requires the mettle of boxing, the athleticism of basketball and the touch of billiards. Try manufacturing that.Italy began holding significantly more lower-level tournaments during the past decade. That allowed Sinner and Musetti easier access to pro tournaments to cut their teeth. And yet, there are other countries that have plentiful schedules of low-level pro tournaments but do not have a group similar to Italy’s. For instance, the United States, which is more than five times as large as Italy and has lots of low level tournaments, does not have a man in the top 30.Andreas Seppi, the 37-year-old Italian journeyman who notched a first-round upset at Roland Garros, credited the proliferation of top players to Italian coaches, who are more seasoned than they were when he was early in his career. Seppi said his coach, Massimo Sartori, essentially learned the trade with him.“I was my coach’s first player,” Seppi said. “Now all these coaches know what they have to do and how the tour works.”The 37-year-old veteran Andrea Seppi said Italian coaches were more seasoned now than they were as he rose up the ranks..Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIndeed, Sinner’s coach, Riccardo Piatti, previously worked with a young Novak Djokovic, and top pros like Richard Gasquet of France and Milos Raonic of Canada.Then again, Musetti’s coach, Simone Tartarini, who has been working with him since he was 7 years old, has coached largely national junior players in the past. The two sometimes share hotel rooms on the road.Sinner and Musetti’s disparate upbringings also offer no clues to success.Sinner, the son of a chef and a restaurant hostess, was a junior skiing champion and did not specialize in tennis until he began training at an academy in his early teens. At first, he struggled emotionally and physically with the daily grind of so many hours on the court, he said earlier this year.Musetti began playing tennis at the age of 4. Other than kicking a soccer ball occasionally with his friends, he never pursued another sport. By age 12, he was among Italy’s standout juniors.So if this golden generation of Italian players proves anything about tennis, it might be the random nature of development and how many different ways there are to play the game.“Some people might say we complain a lot inside the court,” Musetti joked the other day. “I used to, but now I have grown up a little bit.”Blame Fognini for that rap. Fognini, who played doubles with Musetti this spring, regularly offers tips about opponents and tactical advice to his young countrymen. He won’t hesitate to question a line call or hold an umpire, or even an opponent, accountable for the management of a match.He was easily handling Marton Fucsovics of Hungary on Wednesday when a fan in the rowdy crowd screamed after one of his serves, interrupting play. He made sure the chair umpire knew he was not pleased. Up two sets and two breaks, he was still taking long stares at ball marks. However in the third round on Friday, Fognini ran out of steam, losing 6-4, 6-1, 6-3, to Federico Delbonis of Argentina.On the other hand, Musetti, Sinner, Berrettini, and the 26-year-old Lorenzo Sonego — who was seeded 26th here but lost in straight sets in the first round — are mostly all-business on the court.They do not play much like Fognini either. Fognini is a classic counterpuncher. He saunters around the court, taking his time before serving, or returning. He will slice, bash and flick his forehand all during the same point, wait for the slightest opening and then pounce.On Thursday, Sinner played as he always does. All afternoon he attacked another Italian, the 87th-ranked Gianluca Mager, from the back half of the court with darts to the sidelines.Berrettini, who is 6-foot-5, leads with his booming serve, which has been clocked at 146 miles per hour. He powers his way into the court and finishes plenty of points at the net. He also has a highly effective backhand drop shot.Musetti is strong nearly everywhere on the court, with a museum quality one-hand backhand, a beautiful, low-to-high stroke that sends the ball flying off his racket. Opponents have seemingly won a point after pinning him deep on his backhand side, then end up watching a laser dive into the corner.“He’s got a lot of shots,” Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, the world’s fifth-ranked player, said of Musetti after beating him in Mexico in March. “He just has to work a bit on his serve.”Musetti said he spent much of the spring doing that, trying to make it less predictable.The work appears to be paying off. Musetti has yet to lose a set here. By the third set Thursday, his opponent, Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan, older by six years, was kicking his racket across the clay and tossing his cap.“I’m not trying to explain this,” Musetti said after the win. He faces, who else, another Italian, the 83rd-ranked Marco Cecchinato, in the third round.Musetti now has a 20-11 record on the ATP Tour, as good a start as any current player who has finished a season ranked in the top 10, according to Greg Sharko, the tour’s statistics whiz.The teenager from Tuscany is trying to treat these Grand Slam matches like any other, even though he knows that is impossible.“You think ‘racket, ball, opponent,’” Musetti said the other day. “But every tournament is different, especially in the Grand Slam.” More

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      With Biggest Stars Absent, Miami Open Serves Up Some Chaos

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      Top men’s seeds and Naomi Osaka fell earlier than expected, but there was some normalcy: Ashleigh Barty won in women’s singles, successfully defending her title.MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — So what exactly happened at the Miami Open over the past two weeks?Other than the top-seeded Ashleigh Barty walking away with the women’s singles title, something like tennis chaos unfolded at the only significant tournament in North America until August.Where to begin? Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam event winner, lost a match for the first time in more than a year, and on a hardcourt, a surface it seemed she might never lose on again. After the men’s Big Three — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic — skipped this tournament, Jannik Sinner of Italy and Hubert Hurkacz of Poland, close friends and doubles partners, dueled in their first ATP Masters 1000 final. Hurkacz blew past Sinner, a player experts have tapped to be an eventual No. 1, 7-6 (4), 6-4.Barty and Bianca Andreescu, who won Grand Slam events in 2019 but barely played in 2020, gave notice they were just about fully back as they met for the first time in the women’s singles final. A 20-year-old with top-class tennis DNA named Sebastian Korda, the son of the former world No. 2 Petr Korda, made the final eight and was the last remaining American.The top two men’s seeds, Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas, lost in the quarterfinals. Alexander Zverev, the No. 3 seed, lost in the second round after having a bye in the first. Andrey Rublev was the only player in the top 10 of the ATP Tour rankings to make the semifinals, where he lost to Hurkacz in straight sets.Simona Halep, the No. 3 women’s seed, and Sofia Kenin, the No. 4 seed, each won just a single match, and Maria Sakkari, the No. 23 seed, served a bagel to Osaka in the first set of her 6-0, 6-4 quarterfinal win.In short, Miami provided a glimpse of a tennis future that does not include Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Serena Williams, who withdrew from the event after oral surgery: a sport of surprise and entropy.“Everyone can win now,” Rublev said after his quarterfinal win over Korda. “It’s not about ranking.”Rublev was talking about the tournament’s final rounds, but he could have meant the sport. Djokovic and Nadal are still nearly indomitable at big events, but when they skip one, all bets are off. (Federer, 39, has played just one tournament since his two knee operations last year.)Bernard Tomic of Australia said earlier this year that there was not much difference between a player ranked 60 and one ranked 250. It sounded strange, but now seems prescient.Aslan Karatsev, a Russian qualifier, made the semifinals of the Australian Open. Juan Manuel and Francisco Cerundolo, two brothers from Argentina who are ranked outside the top 100, made the finals of tournaments in South America, with Juan Manuel winning a title. Lorenzo Musetti, 19, an Italian ranked 94th, knocked off two players in the top 16 at the Mexican Open.Musetti, though, is only the second-best 19-year-old Italian at the moment: Sinner, the son of a cook and waitress and a surprise semifinalist at the French Open last year, is staking his claim as one of the brightest young players in the game.“He has everything,” Roberto Bautista Agut, the veteran from Spain, said of Sinner after losing to him in three sets in the semifinals. “Big serve. Tall. Moves well. Very good groundstrokes. Mentally great, and he’s improving.”Sinner is 6 feet 2 inches with long arms and legs that make him seem taller, and he has that priceless ability to pivot from defense to offense from nearly anywhere on the court and when his opponent least expects it. On three occasions against Bautista Agut, it looked like Sinner was about to wither, especially when he was down a set and three break points at 3-3 in the second set. Instead, he knotted the game with two winners, including a risky, floating crosscourt backhand that nicked the outside of the line.“Every match has a story,” Sinner said after that win. Later, he said, “Sometimes a few points can decide a match.”Ashleigh Barty, above, played Bianca Andreescu for the first time on Saturday, and beat her in the Miami Open final when Andreescu retired in the second set.Lynne Sladky/Associated PressThe Miami Open was an opportunity to show on a big stage what tennis could eventually look like.“I knew when Novak, Rafa, Roger and Dominic Thiem said they were not going to play, some of the younger guys would have a chance to play really deep,” said Hurkacz, 24, a lanky, pigeon-toed big server who has won two tournaments this year.Hurkacz, who often trains in Florida, was seeded 26th here, but he beat players seeded second, fourth, sixth and 12th in five days. He came back from a set and a service break down to Tsitsipas on a brutally hot day in the quarterfinal; outslugged Rublev in a gutsy performance, on a cool night in the semifinal; then knocked off the game’s latest boy wonder on a bright and breezy Easter afternoon.Sinner served for the first set at 6-5, but Hurkacz broke him at love. Then a series of errors allowed Hurkacz to cruise through the tiebreaker. Hurkacz frustrated Sinner with a serve that kept kicking up above his eyes, and two early service breaks in the second set made the final result come fast.Before the match, Sinner had begged off anointing himself the next big thing in tennis, cautioning that a good 10 days in Miami guaranteed nothing. “The road is long,” he said. “I know that. My team knows that.”Barty, 24, and Andreescu, 20, also know that. The two young Grand Slam champions had never played head-to-head before Saturday’s final, though the showdown proved an anticlimax. Andreescu, who struggled to find her rhythm against Barty’s relentless groundstrokes, appeared to roll her foot and ankle while down, 2-0, in the second set and defaulted two games later, giving Barty her second consecutive Miami Open title, 6-3, 4-0.Barty, the world No. 1 from Australia, opted not to play when tennis returned last August, because of her country’s strict quarantine requirements for anyone returning home during the pandemic. She played little tennis in 2020 from March until October, when she began to prepare for the Australian summer of tennis. She kept her top ranking only because of a pandemic rule change that allowed players to maintain their points from 2019.She won a tuneup for the Australian Open, but lost in the quarterfinals of the Grand Slam event and in the first round of a tournament the next week. Barty has gained confidence. In Miami, she barely used the slices she tends to hit when she loses her edge. She does not plan to return to Australia until the fall so she can avoid the country’s mandatory two-week lockdown for international arrivals.“I knew eventually I would find it,” Barty said of her form and the patience with which she approached her return to the game. “I knew it might not be in the third week or the 10th week or the 20th week.”Andreescu, a Canadian, caught the injury bug shortly after winning the 2019 United States Open. It kept her from last year’s summer and fall events. In Australia, she showed flashes of her shotmaking prowess but was too inconsistent to play deep into events. In Miami, she prevailed in four three-set matches to make the final, surviving a third-set tiebreaker in the semifinal against Sakkari that finished past midnight. Then came another injury, a final twist in this strange tournament.She tried to play through the pain, but eventually gave in to her trainer, Abdul Sillah, who urged her from courtside not to risk further damage. “Abdul basically saved me from myself,” said Andreescu, who crouched and cried when she knew the end had come.With the Miami tournament over, the tours are planning to shift to the clay- and grass-court seasons in Europe, but events there are shrouded in uncertainty. Italy and France are in various stages of lockdowns as the European Union struggles to distribute the coronavirus vaccines. While organizers say the tournaments, the Italian Open and the French Open, which is the next Grand Slam event of the year, remain on track, it’s not clear whether government officials will allow them to take place.While Nadal and Djokovic will no doubt quickly attempt to restore order, Federer has yet to say how much clay-court tennis he will play. His focus, he has said, is being healthy for Wimbledon.Osaka, the winner of two of the last three Grand Slam events, has never won a tournament on those surfaces, leaving the door open for any number of her competitors to catch up to her.“I have more freedom on the clay and grass because I am still learning a lot,” Osaka said last week.In other words, expect more chaos. More