I want the grass. It is in the king’s garden of England. But you have to steal it, conquer every thread, chewing bitter in difficult times, at the cost of going under and relaxing, with an act of fierce will. Nobody offers you on a silver plate, indeed that is the consosing prize of those who lose the final, I want the grass is in a golden cup, but you have to go to take it through the storm sleeve of your emotions.
So did Jannik Sinner on the Wimbledon field, in front of two future king of England, Prince William, and the young George, heroic at 12 years old in a jacket and tie in the sun, but also to the king of Spain who came to cheer the opponent, that Carlos Alcaraz who for a moment seemed to run away againthen taken back in the running and left behind. There is no more magical place for the white gestures of tennis and there is no more important place in which to win something with a racket of the temple where tennis has seen his diabolical impervious rules write. There was a game in this final, more than we have been known.
Who knows how many times in recent months Jannik Sinner, striving to keep up the “poker face” mask, will have asked Rome, Paris and Halle, if the three months of suspension could have cracked something of the “Sinner factor”, that is the unique ability to play the points under pressure. Who knows how many times he will have wondered, during the three months of suspension, if he would have been able to return, as if nothing had happened, remaining the first one: knowing well that everything can be coached, less the “Sinner factor”.
There is nothing that in training can recreate the tension that you feel by playing an appointment with the story, in a place full of symbols, against the strongest opponent on the square, the predestined rival, who has been fighting you for two years, even if always and only in the most important finals: We didn’t know and maybe Jannik did not know, because there is only one way of knowing it: to find yourself in front of that appointment and do not miss him.
The tension in the first set of the Wimbledon 2025 final was felt by both parts of the field, but the Sinner who made himself reassemble the break is that of the two who risked seeing the fresh safety of Rinconquista crumble. The two matches points wasted in Paris could return to screwing in his mind. Perhaps for a moment he risked being sucked into the abyss of regrets.
It wanted time to really enter the game, to give yourself time to refresh yourself, to feel inside the security of making the ball play the Sinner, there has been a need to look in the well of their fears, to give you to your ghosts. It is likely that Jannik Sinner met them all in a precise moment of the final of when he served on 30-30 of the third set on 4-4, an ACE of second ball: a high risk at a very risky moment: the Platonic idea of tennis heroism. Wrong would have meant putting Alcaraz back in the race, one who does not make it repeat. At that precise moment the “Sinner Factor” has been unlocked, from then on the Sinner changed and the game changed. Now we know: Jannik Sinner is not only the one before the stop, he is a new new man who, after having tested a lot of himself and his ability to play the important things in difficult times, has shown the world of knowing how to deal with his insecurities and himself of having put them behind them. Others will come, but now he knows he can face them without letting them win. Moreover, they always come, as Pope Leone recalled to the Jubilee of the sportsmen, by sinning the summit sport with admirable effectiveness: “The man in comparison, in the art of defeat, with one of the deepest truths of his condition: the fragility, the limit. This is important, because it is from the experience of this fragility that we open to hope. The athlete who never makes mistakes, who never loses, does not exist. The champions are not infallible machines, but men and women who, even when they fall, find the courage to get up ».
As long as you win alone, you can delude yourself to be infallible, but you risk going to pieces like a cracked clay stoulet, at the moment from defeat: after three consecutive finals lost against the same opponent, it could happen to Sinner. But it did not happen: Sinner prevented him, with the deed of ferocious will with whom he resumed in Wimbledon That could slide away after the first losed set after having had the opportunity to win it. A game won by building it one step at a time, dominated in the final not of a measure by acquiring passage from itself.
Perhaps there was perhaps all this not said in the gesture of Jannik, who exulted from Ceito for his part, contenting himself with a child smile, and then he was crouched at the height of the net with his face hidden by the visor of the hat, the racket like a crutch. We cannot know what thoughts have passed, at that moment, we can only imagine it and not so much, because they are not many who can appear in times like this, outside the prohibited dreams.
But if it is true that Wimbledon is objectively the victory that solves the career of a tennis player, if doing it as Italian is historical by definition, because it had never happened since tennis was invented, It is certain that there are many more things inside this victory: a boy who grew up, a more mature champion, who even on the most beautiful day, instead of mounted his head, asks himself to himself commitment and seriousness to improve as a player and as a person, and the strength to “accept” things that do not go as you would like, without ever forgetting a thank you to the family who grew up as you are, humble also being able to say I am the best in the world, and for which the person you are matters, whether you win or lose the game, even if it is very important, even if playing it is not for everyone. Even less is to win it and get admitted from then on forever at the tennis temple, of which after winning once you stay for life.
