Struff was dejected after his loss to Jannik Sinner: “He’s always there”
Jan-Lennard Struff discussed his match against Jannik Sinner at Wimbledon, which ended 3-0 in favor of the Italian. It was the first time the German tennis player had advanced to the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam, but he was unable to go any further: “It’s hard to stay focused against a player who performs with such consistency match after match. I felt that if I made just one or two mistakes, he’d capitalize on them right away—that’s what makes him so strong. If you make a mistake, he’s always there,” he said at a press conference.
“In the first set, I made two or three errors, and he converted the break point at 0-40. On a volley, I should have let the ball bounce, but those are decisions you make in an instant; then he closed it out with a winner on the return. In the second set, I tried to stay focused and fight. I fell behind by a break but managed to come back right away, which was crucial, because in matches like this, if you fall behind, he gets into a rhythm and becomes very hard to stop. I had a set point and felt like I was playing freely, with a good chance to win the set. But in the tiebreak, I lost a point with a backhand into the net, and he didn’t give me a chance to get back into it.”
“In the third set, I didn’t serve well—my first-serve percentage was low—and against him, that’s a decisive factor because he’s very solid from the baseline. In a few games, I was down 0-30, and under pressure, it’s tough. In the end, he got the decisive break. I was motivated to win the set, but in the third set, he was the better player.”
Sinner closed out the match with a score of 7-5, 7-6, 6-3 in just over two and a half hours, confirming his now-established consistency on the grass at Wimbledon: this marks his fifth consecutive year reaching the quarterfinals at the Championships, with this victory securing his third career semifinal appearance at the London tournament. In Major quarterfinals, the Italian has lost only five of the sixteen matches he’s played, all against top-5 opponents.
