Jannik Sinner: Vincenzo Santopadre was left with a doubt

Vincenzo Santopadre gave a lengthy interview to the microphones of Fanpage in which he spoke about Jannik Sinner’s defeat in the Us Open final against Carlos Alcaraz. “My impression is that there was an Alcaraz who was actually devastating – he began -. In all aspects: physical, tactical, mental, continuity, which had always been his little shortcoming. He performed at stratospheric levels. We were not more surprised, because he had already shown that he could do it, however, when you have a player like Sinner in front of you, who is definitely superior to all the others he had faced, there could have been a greater difficulty. Which in part there was, but only relatively. Probably Alcaraz was called upon to rise even higher in level, but he did it with good ease, and that was evident and impressive”.

“As for Jannik, surely something a little bit better he could have done, starting with his serve – added Matteo Berrettini’s former coach -. But let&#8217s remember that he also had a great tournament: he only dropped two sets in the whole Slam until the final, and that says a lot. All clean wins: it means you are on a higher level than the others. You start from that: from a player who has made four consecutive finals, indeed five in Slams, so there is a definitely higher level. Again, he had that difficulty in the finals to maintain the intensity and continuity that Alcaraz” had instead.

The’former tennis player raised a question about the Blue’s physical condition: “Are we sure Jannik was at 110%? Because I, as an insider, have a doubt in my mind that he could have been conditioned physically and mentally, for example on his serve. In the semifinals there had been that episode (the abdominal problem, ed.), and a minimum of physical or mental conditioning on the serve could have been there. Then considering that every match has to be contextualized within a path, within a period, within a tournament maybe she was fine, maybe not. It is clear that they will never say that: knowing his team, you don&#8217t go and say you weren&#8217t 100 percent, because that is not nice. But I, as an insider, one question I ask myself”.

“There’was also a little bit of caution because he was mindful of what happened in the semifinals with Auger-Aliassime– he continued -. In the end he some problems, some discomfort he had: let&#8217s not talk about something that prevented him from playing. Then he got over it. What had emerged a little bit, is that when he came back on the court after the second set actually at the beginning he was a little hesitant and served less firmly and less strongly. Sometimes all it takes is a little conditioning that can affect you. But, again, what remains is definitely the overall performance of both of them in the tournament, which was outstanding in all respects”.

“That said, there remains the Spaniard’s victory. That leaves the future of these guys, which I think will lead to specific preparation: a bit like Nadal, Federer and Djokovic did, calibrating the work on their one big opponent. Because in the end, today, the real opponents are just the two of them, and they stimulate each other” concluded Santopadre.