According to Bertolucci, Jannik Sinner is now even more formidable: “Monstrous”
Former tennis player and Sky commentator Paolo Bertolucci provided a detailed analysis in *La Gazzetta dello Sport* of Jannik Sinner’s performance against Miomir Kecmanovic in his Wimbledon debut. The Italian took five sets to defeat the Serbian player, giving his fans a scare with a bad fall and a foot injury. According to some insiders, his opponents have seen “cracks” in Sinner’s game, but for Bertolucci, the champion from Sesto Pusteria is even more formidable than before.
The world No. 1’s struggles have overshadowed an impressive statistic: the 31 aces hit by the South Tyrolean, a staggering number that highlights the Italian’s improvement in this fundamental aspect of the game. “On grass, the serve is more important than on any other surface, because returning it becomes more difficult due to the greater challenges the returner faces in moving toward the ball. The power of the serve, therefore, remains a fundamental weapon for building a foundation for success on grass, and Sinner’s performance yesterday confirmed this,” wrote Bertolucci.
“In a complicated and tortuous match, Jannik relied on his serve, first to stay afloat and then to make the decisive push that carried him across the finish line as the winner. Meticulous Work. Of course, I believe that few of us, after that famous quarterfinal match against Djokovic—also at Wimbledon in 2022, which he lost in five sets after holding a two-set lead—could have imagined that Sinner on grass could come close, in terms of performance in this fundamental shot, to serving giants like Ivanisevic, Sampras, or, more recently, Kyrgios. It was Nole himself, at the end of that match, who suggested to Cahill that he focus, among other things, on the serve to round out his student’s game, and from that moment on, refining that shot became the main focus in building a flawless champion.”
“There were no technical reasons why Jannik couldn’t develop a top-performing serve: his naturally fluid movement and height already worked in his favor. Over time, he added the study and then the application of new trajectories, along with consistent performance within the same match and the same tournament.”
According to Bertolucci, Sinner is even more formidable: “What’s most striking about the world No. 1 isn’t just his ability to fire off more than 30 aces in a match—a performance that’s monstrous in and of itself—but rather his phenomenal ability to bring out the best in his serve when the points are at their most critical: It may seem obvious, but it’s one thing to hit a winning serve at 40-0, and quite another to do so at 30-30 or on break point—those moments in the match that statisticians categorize as ‘rallies under pressure.’ It would be interesting to analyze how many times, in the match against Kecmanovic, Sinner extricated himself from potentially dangerous situations thanks to a point won directly on his serve: I imagine the numbers would be extremely high.”
“Precisely for this reason, we shouldn’t be misled by his first-serve percentage, which is lower than his opponent’s (63% to 66%, partly because our player obviously takes more risks), but is still solid: what’s truly crucial is the percentage of first serves held on the most critical points. Jannik is aware that his serve is a consistent strength he can rely on, and this confidence also carries over into his approach to matches, especially on grass: he knows he’s starting from a position of advantage.”
