When Novak Djokovic went under – when he disjointed himself in that strange way after the serve, sent one shot out of three meters, and started one of his polite conversations in language with the box -, well, that was the best part. It could have been that the opponent won a set, or that the match seemed to be on its way: but at the first indecision of the supposed winner, at the first point played with condescension, the real Nole came out of nowhere, in his most sumptuous homicidal impulse: and from that moment then you just had to wait, usually not too long, for the handshake at the net.
It was a very precise mechanism, which it is no coincidence that Nole’s opponents – like Rafa’s, starting with Andy Roddick – have always described in the same way: first he steals your legs, then he steals your soul. Jannik Sinner belongs to the same category as those two, so he has incorporated the same template, which however he applies in a simplified version, starting directly from the soul. He has done it in almost all of his important matches, even if the other evening, in the memorable round of 16 of Roland Garros against Corentin Moutet, he decided to give a sort of public demonstration of it. I will summarize, for the use of the twenty-eight Italians abroad who missed the meeting due to time constraints.
Essentially, the evening offered two fights for the price of one. The first lasted just under a set, and, courtesy of Corentin, was a sort of showcase of everything tennis could offer, with performers up to par: not just an impressive assortment of drop shots, lobs, volleys , recoveries, accelerations, but the impossibility of predicting what would precede, or follow, what. As a result, for a good half hour the pretender to the throne of world tennis looked like a Chatrier ball boy who had been handed the racket and balls without properly explaining the rules of the game to him – after all, no one could have done it, since in that game only Moutet plays. Very quickly, in fact this unreal show of varied art translated into a score that I don’t know how many other times Sinner has had to put – or will put – on the scoresheet: 5/0, 40-15, two set points against. It’s a shame that at that precise moment the Moutet bacchanal suddenly transformed into the Sinner party, with its usual modalities: pizzas and Cokes to your liking, and everyone in bed at eleven. That is, the second match began, the one we all expected to see: and immediately afterwards it also ended, in the quickest and most painless way. But why? What had happened?
What we said above, more or less. Jannik had planted his fangs in Corentin’s skull, sucking out everything in him. To put it in a less cruel way, since he couldn’t play like Sinner he had decided, after a very quick but very careful study, to play like Moutet – a short ball, then a lob, then an ambush at the net, in case that deranged genius still managed to put the ball back into play: and so on. This while Corentin – conspicuously exposed, as would have been said in the novels of the past – resigned himself to playing like Sinner, that is, he did Exactly what Sinner wanted him to do. Or perhaps what, in a rather mysterious way, Sinner had forced him to do. Amazing, and in some ways sinister. But tennis at its best is.
Forty-eight hours later, while on the pitch Sinner was crumbling that sublime loser Griga Dimitrov – still number 10 in the world, and in amazing form -, from the stands of Chatrier the usual person informed of the facts shouted to him that he could also take it easy, so he was now number 1. Not that Jannik was getting nervous, let alone, but the announcement was still something of an anticlimax. The game down there lost interest for everyone, starting with Dimitrov, who like any colleague in similar circumstances now seemed to think only one thing – the sooner I get away from this ordeal, the better. Sinner made it easier for him, so shortly afterwards he had the interview on the pitch, where despite going around it enough, in the end Fabrice Santoro had to tell him Pulcinella’s secret. Having been awaited for years, then for months, then – feverishly – for days, the news drew applause from those present that was little more than perfunctory. As for the person concerned, who is notoriously not of an impressionable character, he seemed to consider it, like everything that concerns him, something normal. Oh God, no one expected Jannik to get into a row, but in the melancholy tone with which he experienced the coronation there was probably something else, in addition to the regret of having to suffer the injury which, barring miracles, will end the career of the more or less undisputed GOAT .
Probably, what saddened the young emperor must have been the awareness of the deplorable conditions in which his kingdom finds itself, which in fact seems like a kinderheim where the staff have gone into hiding all together and without warning, leaving the guests free to wander around the pavilions – for the scoreboards, if you prefer – without a guide. And they wouldn’t say they were capable. Some of them suffer from the absence of the three monsters in whose shadow they grew up, others from the presence of mum and dad on the corner, and due to a mixture of these factors they all denote a worrying arrest in development, not just in tennis. As in the past in the feminine, today in the masculine everything is possible, and crazy things are the order of the day. To stay at Roland Garros 2024, first Rublev for two of the three sets played against Arnaldi used the racket to flagellate himself like a mystic from his latitudes, then a boy who is generally too composed like Hubert Hurkacz made his debut in the subject play, asking the his opponent, a stunned Griga, if by chance he didn’t feel like changing the chair judge – an unprecedented act, which left even that well-known referee Mac speechless.
So far the folklore. Then there would be the other part of the show, that is the game, and on that level at the moment no active tennis player seems capable of not just beating, but even just harassing Sinner. Which obviously is a problem. There would be Alcaraz, of course, but in the last, now long months, his behavior has been, to put it mildly, erratic: magnificent flashes, disconcerting pauses, and at times even the sensation of a behavior that is not too, or in any case not serious enough. . Of course, everything can change at any time, and perhaps even in the ongoing Slam, but in any case it would be desirable for Sinner not to find himself playing the role, for which he is particularly suited, of the only adult in the room. A champion needs exciting victories, of course, but also a quantity – possibly modest – of equally memorable defeats. Not that one hopes for them, but the exaltation of the glory within reach should always be accompanied by the terror of seeing it slip away, otherwise it is difficult to enter the legend through the main door. Is it true or not, Roger Federer?
