He finished 109 points against 109. But Jannik Sinner won. “What I liked most about my match with Djokovic? Many, but especially the mental aspect.” Tennis is bad: not all points are worth the same. “I played the important games well,” the red baron allowed himself in the game night of triumph (beyond A devastating tie break in the third set.annihilating the world number one: 7-2).
And not all tennis players are the same: Jannik is thin and long-limbed.He has the physical build typical of great hitters (see Goran Ivanisevic, who fixed Djoker’s serve, laying the foundations for the Serbian’s dominance even at an advanced age), this year he has gained another 4 kg of muscles but then he is the explosive La Strength (the leg muscles respond to the ancient memory of skiing, the specialty of the giant slalom), combined with endurance, make the difference when the match gets longer.
If the mind commands the body, it responds to impulses when it is well trained. The significance of Davis’ resignation from the group (but the world number 4 will be there in the Malaga final next week) appears clear in the week of the Turin Masters. “Putting things inside” is the phrase Jannik uses to describeand invisible work when not in tournaments: means to enrich the luggage (example: With Djokovic he handled the backhand diagonal very wellwhich is the specialty of the house, but when the Serbian went to look for the rightwhich was once the “weak” shot, was discovered unprecedented strength Also on this side, not to mention the service, which has grown enormously from Toronto to Vienna), strengthening the body in the gym and injecting new thoughts into the head, thanks to mental work. The sinner who surrendered to Tsitsipas last January (a terrible figure for the retired Greek, here in Turin) in the round of 16 of the Australian Open, recovering two sets but giving up physically in the fifth. He wasn’t a player who believed he could beat top 10 players.much less the king of the ranking.
It’s there constant and harmonious growth curve, without the ups and downs of Alcaraz and Rune (to talk about champions of Generation Z), who convinced Jannik that any entrepreneurship is possible. As? The aspects are several. There is the I work with Formula Medicine by Dr. Riccardo Ceccarelli.the man who has been training minds of F1 drivers, a collaboration that began when Sinner was shadowed by Coach Piatti, and continued in the form of telephone interviews and remote exercises. The physiotherapist advises the diet and prevents motor difficulties, the osteopath keeps joints oiled and loosens energy knots, the mental trainer Keeps your head clean of toxic thoughts. «In tennis, performance depends a lot on brain, before muscles – Ceccarelli explained -, we teach our athletes to reduce the emotional burden of mistakes, that is, we optimize the investment of mental energy, reducing waste.”
While day to day the Sinner team was busy constantly improving the body-mind-tennis package of the best Italian player (“Jannik is tall and thin, has a long arm span and knows how to generate enormous power: when defining the position we take into account above all his characteristics,” said coach Cahill), it is not miss The results have meekly followed the evolution of the man and the player. And then: first victory over the world number one (Alcaraz in Miami), 10 top 10 hits in 2023 (9 in total before this year), 8 wins in the top 5 in 2023 (1 before this year), 59 games won in season (never so many), first italian player of the modern era (since the ATP ranking has existed, that is, since 1973) defeat #1 twice in the same season (the second Djokovic here in Turin on Tuesday night). The greatest success of Jannik’s career can be explained like this.
The Djoker, in defeat, was more sporting than ever: «Congratulations, you played a fantastic game. In the network, hugging him, I told him. He was better in the key moments, he deserved it.” Not only. Sinner wanted that ATP Finals group match more than Djokovic. But to want it he had to come to the conviction that he “could” want it. And it took time (not too much, considering that he is 22 years old).
