In the Manichean sport of the social era, where there are no nuances, the alternative is between knockout and triumph. No middle ground. It’s a shame that this way of looking is unreal, that it resembles that idea of ”instagrammable” and inhuman, soulless perfection that is infecting everything, from classical music to aesthetics, with the risk of putting people in the real world at risk as they are forced to deal with the demands of external expectations that are above possible.
This is what happened to Jannik Sinner: it was enough for him to lose in the semi-final at the Australian Open (to Djokovic…), after having won it twice in a row, and for him – rarissima avis – not to make it past a quarter-final in Doha, for people to be ready to talk about a crisis. A paradox for the probably most constant and continuous player of recent years, for whom it is very rare to have ups and downs, for which the final is the rulethe quarter-final is a certainty regardless of the level of the tournament.
The Indian Wells performance (fierce determination, great tactical intelligence and a game that also showed a couple of times the effectiveness of millimetric lobs with very tall players during the tournament) was perfect in itself and perfect to sweep away any presumed fall.
Also because it took place against a Medvedev who seemed reborn after a real crisis. The same one that hit Stephanos Tsitsipas. There, yes, it makes sense to talk about a crisis: Tsitsipas, Medvedev and Zverev had the misfortune of appearing on the circuit in the middle generation, first crushed by the glass ceiling imposed by the Djokovic-Federer-Nadal triad who approached 40 on the court at a very high level, compressing any ambitions of those who were growing up just behind them. And then to find themselves immediately overtaken in the race by Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.
Once the two terrible guys, younger than them, found the key to beat them, Tsitsipas, Medvedev and Zverev (who had a somewhat different story, first a very serious injury and then a good recovery and a solid position just behind Sinner and Alcaraz, but with half the points per year and without hiding moments of heavy psychological difficulty) actually no longer won against Sinner and Alcaraz. Their middle generation remained compressed between two generations of phenomena, without time to find their own space, and the backlash suffered by the sudden arrival of the two young people made them lose some of their luster.
The Medvedev of Indian Wells now seems to have returned, a sign that one can also recover from crises, and has played almost perfect tennis in recent days, even if he has always been a little incomplete: if he is suffocating in the exchange, on the fly and outside his comfortable areas of the court he finds it very difficult to get out of trouble.
The Sinner of Indian Wells, however, showed an impressive solidity of serve and an even greater mental stability which in the past, in the points under pressure, proof of this is the comeback from the large deficit of 0-4 in the tiebreak then won 7-6 in the final of the second and decisive set.
What maybe the anxiety for perfection of this historic time has lost a bit of sight is the fact that now mature players like Sinner and Alcaraz, who for three years have shared the first place in the ranking, even though they are young and with margins (between 2024 and 2026, Sinner won 144 matches and lost 14 against Alcaraz’s 141 wins and 23 losses, enormous numbers for both. Zverev who was mostly in third place won 132 and lost 50 in the same period), we cannot ask for progression with a growth curve like the one seen in recent years, because as we approach the maximum limit the margin becomes smaller and when we grow again we do it little by little in details, which require time to consolidate.
And perhaps here lies the difference between Alcaraz and Sinner and the others, in the fact that they don’t stop, that they continue to work on their increasingly subtle weak points without ever being satisfied with the level achieved. It will be increasingly difficult to add anything. But they keep trying.
And in all this losing a match every now and then is a detail. Not just normal, but human.
