Former Wimbledon winner Marion Bartoli gave Jannik Sinner’s rivals one big tip on how to beat the world No 1 and Carlos Alcaraz heeded that advice during the French Open final.
During the early stages of the clay-court Grand Slam, the Frenchwoman stated on Prime Video Sport France: “He’s a puncher, a hitter. He’s made enormous physical progress; today he’s a real athlete.
“[But] we know that the 4:30 mark is a bit of a fatal bar for Sinner. Beyond that, he starts to get stuck physically, but we have to take him beyond 4:30 of play.”
Bartoli’s comment was backed up by statistics as Sinner has a poor record in long matches as at that point he had lost all six of his matches that were longer than three hours and 50 minutes.
In case you were wondering, the 2024 Australian Open final against Daniil Medvedev lasted three hours and 44 minutes.
Six defeats became seven after the Roland Garros final against Alcaraz as that also went the distance.
It became clear that during the latter stages of the match that the Spaniard had more in the tank than his opponent with Alcaraz eventually winning 4-6, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (10-2) in five hours in 29 minutes with the match the second-longest Grand Slam final in the Open Era.
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The Italian is now 6-10 in matches that have gone to a fifth set and he has lost eight of his last nine Grand Slam matches that have gone to a decider.
Three of those defeats have come against Alcaraz while Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Medvedev and Daniel Altmaier have also claimed wins.
Sinner was asked about fading physically late during long matches following his devastating loss to Alcaraz in Paris.
“No, you cannot compare this match with other matches, I believe,” he said.
“Physically I was quite fine. Of course, tired. He was tired too, you know, because it was physical match. It was mental match. What can you do? You know, now knowing the result, it is what it is, you know? You can’t really change it.
“I’m still happy to be part of this match. You know, I think it was a very, very high-level match, was long. Yeah, and it happens. You know, we saw it in the past with other players, and today it happened to me.
“So we try to delete it somehow and take the positive and keep going. There are no other ways.”
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