Jannik Sinner\u2019s reign as world No 1 will continue despite his defeat in an epic French Open final against Carlos Alcaraz, with his reputation enhanced after an epic contest in Paris.<\/p>\n
Sinner will rue the three match points that passed him by in the five-set classic against Alcaraz, with the Italian left to lick his wounds as his big rival stormed back to win a match hailed by many observers as one of the greatest of all-time in tennis.<\/p>\n
The dust is settling on the dramatic events at Roland Garros and in an exclusive interview with Tennis365, former world No 1 Mats Wilander has given his verdict on why Sinner is sitting in that prized ranking position he once owned.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Tennis365 in an interview conducted at Roland Garros while he was working as a TNT Sports analyst, Wilander picked out the reason why Sinner is able to blow away all of his opponents, apart from the brilliant Alcaraz.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen players hit the ball harder than Jannik, but not a guy who hits it this hard and takes it this early,\u201d Wilander told Tennis365. \u201cSinner is the real deal, there\u2019s no doubt about it.<\/p>\n
Statistics confirm Jannik Sinner\u2019s backhand is better than all of his tennis rivals<\/a><\/p>\n The 10 greatest Grand Slam men\u2019s singles finals of the Open Era \u2013 ranked!<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe combination of taking it early and hitting it that hard is what is so incredible with Sinner. It is much more difficult to hit that hard and that consistently when you take it so early.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have seen a lot of guys standing three metres behind the baseline on a clay court and smacking it hard, as they have time to line the ball up and get that connection on it.<\/p>\n \u201cSinner is not doing that. He is standing up on the baseline, he is hitting the ball so hard and I\u2019ve never seen anyone in my time in tennis who has that combination of hitting the ball so hard and taking it so early.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can see the impact it is having on his opponents as they simply don\u2019t have the time to get into position to trade with him. It is remarkable the speed both Sinner and Alcaraz are playing the game right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilander is wary of comparing the current stars of the men\u2019s game to the Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, with those three icons all winning 20 or more Grand Slam titles in their record-breaking careers.<\/p>\n Yet Wilander is convinced Sinner and Alcaraz have the potential to take the sport to the next level, as he hints they may be there already.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels to me like this is another level,\u201d he added. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean that they are better than Federer at his best, or Nadal and Djokovic at their best.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe they make more mistakes, but the game is faster. They make more mistakes than Djokovic and Nadal when they were at their best and that\u2019s why it\u2019s so hard to compare the different eras.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to bring Nadal\u2019s mindset into this discussion. You need to bring in Djokovic\u2019s ability to figure out what is going on and giving what they don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why I like Novak hanging around and trying to test himself against these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n Sinner will now be looking to win his first Wimbledon title when the next Grand Slam gets underway at the end of this month and he is due to play at the Halle grass court event in Germany next week.<\/p>\n Alcaraz has entered the prestigious ATP 500 tournament at the Queen\u2019s Club in London, where he lifted the title in 2023.<\/p>\n TNT Sports will screen highlights of Wimbledon this year and will show the All England Club finals live.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n READ NEXT: Carlos Alcaraz addresses greatest Grand Slam final talk after French Open epic<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Jannik Sinner is \u2018the best of all-time\u2019 in one key area claims former world No 1<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jannik Sinner\u2019s reign as world No 1 will continue despite his defeat in an epic French Open final against Carlos Alcaraz, with his reputation enhanced after an epic contest in Paris. Sinner will rue the three match points that passed him by in the five-set classic against Alcaraz, with the Italian left to lick his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}