MELBOURNE, Australia — Just as it did 12 months ago, the tennis gods gave the Australian Open the men’s singles draw it craved. On the steps of Margaret Court Arena, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz emerged in opposite halves, setting up the possibility of a first Grand Slam final duel for the matchup that defines tennis on the ATP Tour.
The 23-year-old Italian and the 21-year-old Spaniard split the four majors 2-2 in 2024. They hit the ball as hard as anyone and cover every inch of the court, laterally and vertically, inside the lines and out.
For their opponents, their tennis feels like a different sport to the one they signed up to at the start of their journey to the professional circuit.
They also do not lack for confidence.
“I’m an ambitious guy,” Alcaraz said during a visit to New York in December for an exhibition at Madison Square Garden. “I’m sure sooner or later I’m going to be the Australian Open champion.”
Sinner said his goal last year was to gain a better understanding of what he might be able to achieve in his career. With two Grand Slams triumphs and the No. 1 ranking he got some hints, though ticking those boxes was not a specific goal.
“It’s going to be the same next year,” he said after winning the ATP Tour Finals in Turin and finishing the season 73-6. “Whatever we can catch, we take, and the rest we learn.”
Sinner and Alcaraz have reconfigured the sport, overtaking the baseline call and response honed by Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic and the reactive development of players like Alexander Zverev and Daniil Medvedev, who arrived armed with huge serves and counterpunching groundstrokes.
Their ATP Tour rivals, from Zverev and Medvedev to Taylor Fritz, Casper Ruud, and all the way down, are at a loss. The tennis they knew has vanished before their eyes.
Zverev, who knows he is world No. 2 in rank but not in spirit, knows what this feels like. He rarely gets tired during tennis matches, even the longest five-set duels at Grand Slams. The 2024 French Open final against Alcaraz was different. By the fifth set, his legs were gone, his body wilting from the relentlessness of the challenge that he expects will shape tennis for many years.
“Everybody talks about how great they are defensively,” Zverev said after defeating Alcaraz at the ATP Tour Finals in Turin. He doesn’t buy it.
“Tennis is not about defense anymore,” he added.
“Your players are playing more offensively than ever before,” he said. “It’s not just about the serve and the forehand anymore. It’s about the movement, the aggression, the speed. They’re pushing their opponents way back, and sometimes it’s just not possible to keep up.”
Sinner and Alcaraz are having a similar impact on their sport. Tennis courts are still 78 feet long and 27 feet wide. They have not grown. These two just make it seem like they have.
In most tennis rallies, the player that forces their opponent into or outside the tramlines — where the width of the singles court expires — is likely to win the point. Either the ball won’t come back because the angle is too sharp, or it will come back soft and floating, ready to be dispatched into space.
There is a massive difference in what happens when Sinner and Alcaraz are outside the tramlines. This supposed zone of no return is where they can show off. It’s where Alcaraz can display his blazing speed and rocketing forehands blasted on a full sprint over or around the net post. It’s where Sinner embodies the junior skiing champion he once was, bending low as he swings his racket then pushing back into the court like he has just come around a slalom gate on icy slope.
Sinner and Alcaraz are winning points or getting on the attack from places where they are supposed to lose. It has created a paradox, most visibly with Alcaraz, in which stressing and pressing them is a bad idea. They win one impossible point, and then another, lifting the crowd and pointing to their ears, and the avalanche starts to rumble down the mountain.
Zverev, who is ranked world No. 2 in rank but not in spirit, knows what this feels like. He knows what it is like to be pushed to new heights.
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