How potential became reality: Sinner’s Halle rivals on his charge to No. 1

It takes more than prodigious talent to reach World No. 1. Climbing to the top of tennis’ mountain also requires mental strength, rigorous discipline, and the ability to stay dedicated to the game. It is a difficult combination of attributes that ensures no one, not even one of the brightest talents in the game, is guaranteed to go all the way to the top.

Yet Jannik Sinner’s rise to become the latest No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings has taken few by surprise, not least the Italian’s rivals on the ATP Tour. As the 22-year-old prepares for his first tournament as the world’s top player at the Terra Wortmann Open in Halle, several of his rivals in the ATP 500 field recalled seeing great things in Sinner’s future from the minute he burst onto the scene as a scrawny 17-year-old.

“The thing about Jannik is he came along very early,” Daniil Medvedev, another man to have occupied the No. 1 spot in the PIF ATP Rankings, told ATPTour.com. “Everyone could see straight away that he had big potential. The thing about potential is it is always tricky. You never know if it is going to grow, but he always seemed very professional and serious, and usually these are the big ingredients for this potential to become reality.

“That’s what happened. There was maybe one year or one year and a half where he maybe stopped improving for one moment, and I think the rankings would say the same, but he has just reached another level in his game. Now he’s beating a lot of players, gaining a lot of points and winning a lot of tournaments.”

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Sinner and Medvedev’s fellow Top 10 star Andrey Rublev concurs. He has faced Sinner at least once every season since 2020, with the most recent meeting coming in the quarter-finals during the Italian’s title run at January’s Australian Open. For Rublev, the rock-solid on-court mindset that Sinner has developed has been key to his recent success.

“Mentally he has made a huge jump,” said Rublev, when asked how today’s Sinner compares to the teenage version he faced years ago. “In the past sometimes, you could see he could drop a bit. Now it doesn’t matter what the score is, it doesn’t matter who he is playing, he keeps the level most of the time without dropping.

“Maybe one match in three months he will drop a little bit, but it is really tough to maintain it for nearly half a year like he has. This year, I already dropped my level more than 10 times! So I would like to learn those things.”

From 2019 to 2023, Stefanos Tsitsipas won five of his first six Lexus ATP Head2Head clashes with Sinner. Despite his early successes against the Italian, Tsitsipas remembers sensing he was witnessing the emergence of a special talent.

“When I first played him, I remember it very well, it was in Rome, and he was this very skinny kid,” said Tsitsipas. “He hadn’t developed any muscle yet but was very talented. I could see from his strokes that he was very free and had no fear when he played.

“He did put up a battle against me. At the time I was in the Top 10, I had just got in a few months before that, and I was in one of the best periods of my life. I was playing great tennis, but I still felt there was a challenge from the other side of the net. Even though I won, let’s say, relatively OK, 6-3, 6-2, I still feel it was not an easy match. He gave a lot of troubles to me.”

Despite the one-sided scoreline, Tsitsipas saw enough of Sinner in that 2019 encounter to feel confident about the teenager’s future.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘This kid is going to be really good, he is going to enter the Top 10 at some point’,” said Tsitsipas. “I just didn’t know it would be that soon, but I was sure he would make it to the Top 10. Well, now he has earned his spot as World No. 1. His results prove everything. He has been very consistent throughout the entire year, shown great dedication to the sport and had some amazing wins.

“It is nice to see that. Even though it is not me, I really feel happy for what he has accomplished.”

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At Roland Garros last month, Christopher Eubanks took on Sinner for the first time since the 2022 US Open. Both those matches ended in straight-sets wins for the Italian, and the World No. 44 Eubanks recalls being similarly impressed on both occasions.

“I think everyone kind of knew, with the trajectory he was on,” said Eubanks of facing Sinner in 2022. “Even going into that US Open he was progressing pretty rapidly. You knew that he was about there, it was just a matter of time when it was going to happen. He had match point in the quarter-finals against Carlos, and Carlos went onto win the US Open, so Jannik was one point away from defeating the eventual champion. So everyone knew, and his rise to No. 1 wasn’t much of a surprise.”

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