John Isner admits World number one Jannik Sinner took him by surprise in 2024.
The Italian began the year ranked number four and he had yet to win a Grand Slam title.
With 2024 now set to draw to a close, Sinner is the ATP’s top ranked player and he won the first two majors of his career in addition to several other championships.
He surpassed the achievements of rival and friend Carlos Alcaraz this year and Jannik Sinner looks poised for a lengthy spell at the summit of men’s tennis.
What surprised John Isner about Jannik Sinner in 2024 and what he thinks is ‘good news’ for men’s tennis
Entering 2024, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic looked poised to be the two players who would dominate proceedings on the ATP Tour.
But while the Spaniard would continue to show his prowess at Grand Slam level, Djokovic failed to win a major and Sinner stepped up his game and won two.
It was also the 23-year-old’s consistency that surprised John Isner, as he expected Alcaraz to be the leading player in 2024. That being said, the American thinks having two top stars pushing one another is great for the game moving forward.
“I think going into 2024 if you were to say someone was going to have a 73-6 win/loss record with two slams, you probably would have said Carlos Alcaraz,” Isner told the Nothing Major podcast.
“I think a lot of people did believe Sinner could challenge Alcaraz in 2024 but I don’t think many people believed that he would surpass him and be by far and away the number one player. That surprised me a little bit.
“I had Alcaraz, for me going into the year, pencilled in as the number one player. But this, for me, spells out very good news for tennis in general on the men’s side.”
Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz took their rivalry to another level in 2024
Alcaraz and Sinner’s exciting head-to-head rivalry went up a level following their three meetings in 2024, all of which went to a deciding set.
Their first contest came at Indian Wells and Alcaraz won 1-6 6-3, 6-2 to reach the final and end Sinner’s unbeaten start to the season.
Their next contest came in the semi-finals of the French Open, and Alcaraz prevailed in five sets before going on to win the title.
Alcaraz and Sinner’s third and final meeting of the year came in the China Open, which was one of the matches of the year.
The World number three lost the first set before coming back to win a final set tiebreak after being 1-3 down to clinch the title.
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