Sinner, 19, has caught the attention of the tennis world with his quick ascent up the singles rankings. His new test is Rafael Nadal at the French Open.
Jannik Sinner at Roland Garros in 2020, for his first participation - Christophe Ena/AP/SIPA
Before Jannik Sinner took his first steps toward scaling the world tennis ladder, he was quickly descending mountains in the Italian Alps.
Sinner, 19, learned skiing before tennis, and German before Italian while growing up in South Tyrol, a territory of Austria until World War I
that is now known as a placid retreat.
He only began to take tennis more seriously at age 13, moving from Italy’s northeast to the northwest to train at the academy of Riccardo Piatti in Bordighera, near the French border.
Piatti, who had met Sinner earlier at a tournament in Milan, said he was immediately impressed by Sinner’s courage on the court and his unusual willingness to play proactively rather than wait for his opponents to miss their shots. “He was close to the baseline, hit the ball fast, hit the ball to win the points,”
Piatti said of Sinner.
“It’s not normal to see players under 13, 14, similar to that.”
Piatti said he could see the influence of skiing on Sinner’s tennis game: just as a ski racer must be intensely focused for a race that can last less than a minute, a tennis player be intensely focused for the short burst of each point.
“This kind of education he has also in tennis,”
Piatti said.
“He’s very focused when he plays a point, and after that he relaxes.”
His sharp ascent in tennis is the inverse of how he has navigated snowy mountains. Two years ago, he was ranked 870th.
Now, Sinner is ranked 75th on the ATP Tour and poised to break the top 50 after reaching the French Open quarterfinals.
Should he pass the steep test he faces on Tuesday — 12-time champion Rafael Nadal and his 97-2 record at Roland Garros — the scope of his breakout would magnify. “Not the easiest thing, for sure,”
Sinner said of that challenge.
Sinner’s biggest career achievement before the French Open came last year, when he won the ATP Next Gen event for players 21 and younger. At only 18, he blitzed the field while playing in a quicker format.
This French Open quarterfinal against Nadal will be Sinner’s first match facing any of players who make up the Big Three of men’s tennis, including Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer. Still, in the lead-up to the French Open, Sinner practiced on consecutive days with No. 3 Dominic Thiem, the No. 1 Djokovic, and No. 2 Nadal. - France TV
Nadal said that he has seen Sinner “improving every single week” of the tour.“He has an amazing potential,” Nadal said. “He moves the hand very quick and he’s able to produce amazing shots.”
The speed of Sinner’s improvement was also noticed by the sixth-ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas, who beat Sinner in straight sets at the Italian Open last year, then lost to him 16 months later at the same event.
“For sure, we can see a great future, see him do good things on the circuit,” Tsitsipas said. “I would not be surprised, yeah, if he has good wins against the top five and the top three. Why not? He has a very big game, a very talented player. I think he is a hard-hitter as well, which makes it difficult.”
When Sinner got the best win of his career on Sunday at Roland Garros, beating the recent United States Open finalist Alexander Zverev, 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3, in the fourth round, his celebration was muted, simply holding up his right fist as he walked up to the net.
“Still a lot of work to do,” Sinner said after the match. “Physically, technically, everything. It’s, yeah, a long way.”
Piatti said that Sinner’s breakthrough has come in part because he savors the playful elements of the game.“With the professional players, everyone thinks it’s a job they need to do. Him, he loves to practice,” Piatti said. That attitude, Piatti said, has kept the pressure down.“He knows that every point there is a solution and he has a game to find the solution to try to win every point,” Piatti said. “Mental strength is when it’s easy. For him, it’s quite easy, everything that he’s doing.”
Schwartzman is among the shortest players in elite tennis, but at this unique French Open, he has become a brutal opponent. He beat Dominic Thiem in a quarterfinal on Tuesday.
Diego Schwartzman is one of the shortest contenders in men’s tennis — and he recently beat Rafael Nadal on red clay. The circumstances of this French Open could line up in his favor. - Sportskeeda
Modern men’s professional tennis does not really do small. The last Grand Slam men’s singles champion who was not at least six feet tall was Gaston Gaudio of Argentina, the 2004 French Open champion. During the past decade,
as tennis has become ever more physical,
just two men under six feet have even made a Grand Slam final.
And yet, the most dangerous man in Paris right now besides Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic may be a steady baseliner from Argentina named Diego Schwartzman, whose listed height of 5 feet 7 inches could be one of the more generous measurements in professional sports.
In the biggest win of his career,
Schwartzman knocked off the No. 3 seed, Dominic Thiem
, the United States Open champion, in a five-set marathon that lasted five hour and eight minutes.
The 7-6 (1), 5-7, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (5), 6-2 victory featured Schwartzman in his classic form — gritty, relentless and surprising and, for his opponent, endlessly frustrating. - Firstpost AP
“I was out of my mind,” he said of his play early on. “I was so nervous. I saw a chance today and I didn’t take it in the second and third sets.”
When it counted though, he took every chance he had, running away with the final set in dominant fashion against a listing opponent who played like a boxer who had been knocked out but hadn’t fallen down. On the final point, Thiem sent a limp drop shot floating into the bottom of the net, and Schwartzman, 28, had his first win in a major against one of the top five players in the world, as well as a triumph for every undersized weekend tennis warrior.
Schwartzman, who made his first Grand Slam semifinal with the win, has won nine of his past 10 matches during the abbreviated season on Europe’s clay courts, his favorite surface,
especially this year
.
In Rome, he pulled off one of the rarest achievements in the game in the past 15 years —
a win against Nadal on red clay
— before losing to Djokovic, the world No. 1, in the Italian Open final.
Thiem, at 6-foot-1, is officially listed as six inches taller than Schwartzman, a close friend and former doubles partner, but in reality, the difference is closer to 10 inches. (I am 5-foot-8. I have stood eye-to-eye with Schwartzman. He is not 5-foot-7.)
It is possible that Schwartzman’s parents knew very early that he might excel in sports despite his height — they named him for Diego Maradona (5-foot- 5), another undersized sports hero from their country. His nickname is El Peque — a slang term in Spanish that roughly means “shorty” in English.
Diego Schwartzman (on the left side of the picture) standing next to Dominic Thiem. - Tennisnet.com
Thiem, who had made it clear he has been
running on fumes
since
his marathon U.S. Open final
,
may have doomed his chances in this match when he was stretched to five sets against the French qualifier Gaston, ranked No. 239, on Sunday. Gaston, at 5 feet 8 inches — another relatively diminutive player — delivered a perfect game plan for Schwartzman to follow, frustrating Thiem with his display of spins, drop shots and unrelenting defense.
When that match was over, Thiem saw Schwartzman cooling down from his match on an exercise bike. Knowing he was going to need all of the help he could get, Thiem wandered over and gave Schwartzman a pretend whack on the leg.“Obviously, playing like how I’m playing the last two weeks on clay, I have chances,” Schwartzman said.
Indeed he did. He knows the circumstances — the schedule, the weather and a switch to what players say is a heavier ball — have aligned to give him perhaps the best chance he will ever have to make a Grand Slam final.
The French Open usually takes place in late May and early June,
but organizers moved it to this early fall time slot
because of the coronavirus pandemic, which largely shut down sports in the spring. In Rome last month, and in Paris the past 10 days, temperatures have been cool, mostly in the mid-50s.
The cooler temperatures have had a significant effect on the behavior of the tennis ball, which becomes less lively in colder weather. Also, the tournament organizers switched their ball sponsorship to Wilson from Babolat this year, and players say the new ball is heavier than the old one.
Those factors have combined to remove the most powerful arrow from the quiver of anyone who relies heavily on blasting the ball through the court, and helps a relentless and quick defender like Schwartzman, who limits his errors and avoids giving away free points. “This is tough on the big hitters,” said Martina Navratilova, the 18-time Grand Slam champion. “If you are fast and you can run around and go get the ball, you have an advantage. Someone like Nadal, he gets hurt.”
That dynamic was on display against Thiem, a massive hitter who nailed 65 winners, several on drop shots of his own, but also made 81 unforced errors, and watched Schwartzman chase down ball after ball that he never expected to be returned. That was no accident. For a small player like Schwartzman, a deader ball is a blessing, because it rarely bounces out of his strike zone, and with an extra split second to tee up his shots, he can be incredibly dangerous when his opponents are serving. “I have to do a mix,” Schwartzman said, “being aggressive when I have those chances and playing defense when I have to.”
One of the game’s top returners of serve of late, Schwartzman punished Thiem on his second serve, which is becoming a habit. Thiem won just 42 percent of his second serve points. Lorenzo Sonego won just nine points, or 26 percent, on his second serve in a loss to Schwartzman on Sunday. Norbert Gombos of Slovakia, Schwartzman’s third round victim, won just 45 percent of points on his second serve.
A well-disguised drop shot barely passes over the net and dies when it hits the red clay. Often , it has also been a winner in Paris
The 20 times Grand Slam winner, Roger Federer about to hit a dropshot. - Tennis World France
Sofia Kenin, who is having the most successful season of any American tennis player, is eager to deploy her drop shot on any surface.
But the temptation has been even greater than usual at this autumnal French Open, where the cool and often humid conditions make for lower bounces off the red clay.
“Drop shot heaven,” Kenin confirmed on her way to the quarterfinals of Roland Garros.
Players, both seeded and unseeded, have definitely taken the hint in Paris.
Hugo Gaston, a quick and flashy French wild card, tried 55 drop shots and won 40 of those points in his five-set thriller with Dominic Thiem in the fourth round, losing the match but acquiring plenty of new followers.
Picture of Hugo Gaston at Roland Garros 2020. - France TV
The men’s No. 1 Novak Djokovic, who has yet to lose a set in four matches, tried more than 30 drop shots on Monday in his 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Karen Khachanov. Djokovic has said from the start of the tournament that the tactic was going to be a particularly important factor this year.
But as Djokovic knows too well at age 33, drop shots do not always lead to paradise.
They run the same risk as potato chips: once you open the bag, it can be hard to resist the temptation.
“I love the drop shot but maybe too much,” Djokovic acknowledged on Monday.
Gaston also indulged himself too often down the stretch and eventually began missing on critical points; but not before making a deep impression on Thiem, 27, a great athlete and clay-court master who has chased down enough drop shots to be a connoisseur.
“I haven’t seen for a very long time a player with such a big touch in his hands,” Thiem said. “His drop shots are just
from another planet. I was sprinting like 400 times to the net.”It was a delicate dance for Gaston, but surely the right play considering that standing at the baseline and exchanging full-cut topspin groundstrokes with the powerful Thiem would have played right into Thiem’s strengths. “Perhaps at the end there were three or four shots that weren’t quite right for the moment in the match,” said Marc Barbier, Gaston’s coach. “But you can’t criticize him for that. Hugo has to find and search for solutions to avoid confronting Thiem on his terms. In trying to be creative, Hugo exposes himself to the counterattack but also exposes himself to making a bad choice. You can’t have regrets.”
A bad drop shot is usually about as effective as a double fault, but a good one is a thing of cruel beauty: a wicked change of pace, preferably hit off the same backswing as a full-force groundstroke and then sliced with just the right feel to barely cross over the net and die a glorious death in the clay.
Put too much arc on the ball or hit the shot from too far behind the baseline and hard-running players like Thiem will easily track it down. Fail to disguise it and players will start to sprint forward before the drop shot is deployed. But time it correctly — as Djokovic, Kenin, Gaston and others have done so often this year — and the rewards are often immediate. “I have different stuff that I really like, but the drop shot is definitely a key,” Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion, said of her game. “It’s a great factor, especially on the clay.”
Her opponents have often not even tried to run down some of her best efforts. She hit nine drop shot winners against Fiona Ferro in her 2-6, 6-2, 6-1 victory in the fourth round on Monday, using the tactic with her forehand and her two-handed backhand.
“I was having a hard time reacting, especially when she was playing her regular strokes deeper,” Ferro said.
Powerful, deep groundstrokes can set up drop shots, which is part of the reason Djokovic’s are usually so effective. “With the opponent fearing the big shot, the tendency
is to back up, and that’s the ideal moment to use the drop shot,” said Mats Wilander, a three-time French Open champion in the 1980s, in an interview with L’Équipe. “You change your grip and voilá, there it is.”
But drop shots can also set up powerful, deep groundstrokes.
In the third round, qualifier Irina Bara was so bamboozled against Kenin that on several occasions, she started to move forward in anticipation of a backhand drop shot only to have to quickly change plans and directions when Kenin went for a flat, two-handed backhand drive instead.
In French, the drop shot is called an “amortie,” which translates as “cushion” or “shock absorber” — a fine way of putting it when you watch a player like Kenin or Gaston absorb an opponent’s power and respond with deft spin.
Spanish-speakers call it a “dejada”, which comes from the verb dejar, which means “to leave” something, like keys on a counter. But leaving the ball out of your opponent’s reach is not always necessary for a drop shot to be effective. It is often a combination-punch: all the more so on a low-bouncing surface like the red clay of Roland Garros in the fall of 2020.
Time and again, Thiem would slide forward and get a racket on a Gaston drop shot but fail to do much more than poke the ball back into play, leaving Gaston free to lob him or rip a passing shot.
The classic clay-court duel is a drop shot answered with another drop shot: frequently on display as Djokovic played Khachanov. The prospect of that counterattack is why it is generally wise to follow a drop shot into net, which means that both players end up there together: not the way it typically works on faster surfaces in singles.
It has led to some spectacular exchanges in Paris: reflex volleys, extreme angles and lunging athleticism. And though much is far from ideal about the French Open this October — small crowds, mandatory masks and dreary weather — drop shot mania is a fine consolation prize. “It definitely is the right play here this year,” Kenin said.
Hugo Gaston's highlights against Thiem below. You'll see a few of his best dropshots. If you can't watch it on our website,
click here.
- Roland Garros Officiel
