Rennae Stubbs thinks she knows what Jannik Sinner’s mindset is after watching Carlos Alcaraz play recent exhibition events.
The World number one has not played since helping Italy successfully defend the Davis Cup in November.
The Italian is enjoying his off season and was seen at Sunday’s F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix waving the chequered flag.
Sinner’s rival Carlos Alcaraz on the other hand, is already back on court after playing two exhibition events in America last week, just two days after representing Spain at the Davis Cup finals.
What will Jannik Sinner be thinking about rival Carlos Alcaraz?
Jannik Sinner is certainly making the most of his offseason after a very impressive 2024 campaign. Including the Davis Cup he has won nine titles, including his first two Grand Slam triumphs at the Australian Open and US Open.
The 23-year-old is having a well deserved rest before commencing preparations for the 2025 season, while Alcaraz was already back out on court.
Rennae Stubbs took to her podcast to react to different schedules of the two players and suggested what Sinner must be thinking.
“The fact that he played this and then he played Charlotte. I was like when is this guy having any time off? He is starting his pre-season this week, I asked his agent,” Stubbs said.
“Apparently he had two weeks off and didn’t hit a tennis ball after the Davis Cup. I was like so when he played Ben he hadn’t hit a ball for two weeks. So those were his weeks off and coming to play these exhos was like him getting started for next year.
“I tell you, if I’m Jannik Sinner I am sitting back there and going ‘okay, I had a pretty good pre-season, I had two weeks off, and then I went straight into it’. I don’t know, we’ll see.”
What do Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz want to improve?
Sinner and Alcaraz won a combined 13 titles in 2024 and shared the four Grand Slam titles between them.
They firmly established themselves as the leading players in a new era of men’s tennis and their head-to-head rivalry went to the next level. Despite their success over the last 12 months, there is still areas for them to improve, which they touched in recent weeks.
“In fact, I try not to go into defence. My tennis is versatile, but, for example, I still don’t know how to play the net game well,” Sinner told Esquire Australia in December.
“When [former Italian tennis pro] Simone Vagnozzi came to my team, he gave me seven to eight pieces of information per game. I honestly didn’t understand anything.
“He told me: ‘Every now and then you make a slice’. But I didn’t know how to do it, so we made a lot of changes. It’s a shot I don’t do technically correct, because I hold the racket with two hands. Still, I feel more confident with it.
“Simone is good because we talk a lot and he doesn’t impose rules on me. He asks me to be more fluid and with the right distance. Touching the ball in the right way also means spending less energy.”
In November, Alcaraz said: “There are specific things. Of course I would like to improve my serve more, obviously I have to do that, and other things that I prefer not to say now because my rivals will know them.
“I am going to sit down with Juan Carlos and write down in a notebook, on paper, what things we are going to work on specifically during the preseason.”
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