Before Wimbledon began two weeks ago I projected a Wimbledon gentlemen’s final between the top two players in the world (Jannik Sinner of Italy and Carlos Alcaraz of Spain), and that is what we will have on Sunday. Over the last two weeks, Sinner and Alcaraz have been clearly the top two players in the world.
On Sunday, the edge should still go to Alcaraz, the world number two. Even though Sinner has won his last two matches in straight sets (beat 10th seed Ben Shelton of the United States, 7-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the quarterfinals, and the sixth seed Novak Djokovic of Serbia, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 in the semifinals), we still cannot ignore the fact he injured his elbow in his fourth round match against Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria. We may not be speaking about Sinner in the final if Dimitrov had not injured his pectoral muscle or if Djokovic injured his groin late in his quarterfinal win over Flavio Cobolli of Italy.
What we have seen in Sinner’s last two wins has been consistency. Yes, we did see a rough patch early in the third set from Sinner on Friday in the quarterfinals. That is when we saw an impressive adjustment from Sinner, who stepped back a little back in returning Djokovic’s serve. The tactic paid dividends as the world number one broke Djokovic twice in the final set to win the match.
Alcaraz meanwhile needed four sets to beat the world number five, Taylor Fritz of the United States, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3, 7-6. Alcaraz beat Fritz 8-6 in a fourth set tiebreak. Please note the singles finals this weekend are two hours later than normal. Organizers have scheduled the doubles finals prior to the singles finals.
