Jannik Sinner became a three-time Grand Slam champion after defending the Australian Open to continue his dominance on hard courts.
Sinner won his second Australian Open title after beating Alexander Zverev in a straight set final in Melbourne.
The Italian is currently on a 21-match winning streak, with Sinner only losing to three players since becoming world number one last year.
Despite his impressive form, there is some doubt over Sinner’s future due to the WADA appeal following his two failed anti-doping tests.
Sinner has become more associated with hard courts in his rise to the top of the ATP Tour, but his first Grand Slam quarter-final actually came at Roland Garros.
What Jannik Sinner said about Rafael Nadal after their Roland Garros quarter-final in 2020
Sinner won his first ATP Tour match in 2019, but did not make his breakthrough at a Grand Slam until the autumn held edition of Roland Garros a year later.
Having beaten two seeded players in Zverev (6) and David Goffin (11), 19-year-old Sinner found himself in a Grand Slam quarter-final for the first time.
This was where he would come up against the ‘king of clay’ Rafael Nadal, for the first time, at the tournament the Spaniard had dominated for so many years.
As he so often did at Roland Garros, Nadal won in straight sets in a close-fought match that lasted nearly three hours.
This included Sinner serving for the first set and being up an early break in the second.
When asked about the match in his post-match press conference, Sinner spoke about having missed opportunities against Nadal.
“I had chances in the first set. I had chances in the second set. I didn’t use them,” explained Sinner. “I’ve been break up in both sets. When you are a break up, the thing what you have to do, you have to try to play your service game better, which today I didn’t.
“Obviously it’s tough against him. He’s not missing that much. The ball is quite heavy. You have to be with the right balance on court, to don’t go too much and not too low. If you don’t go with not enough speed, he will go for the winners or he’s going to move me, which he has done in the first service game of the match.”
Sinner continued, “He had the ball and he started to move, to move, to move. After that I tried to go in the court, trying to play a little bit faster, take his time away. It worked quite well.
“As I said, I had chances in the first and second set. Unfortunately I didn’t use them. Then when he goes up two sets to love with break, it’s not that easy. I tried to stay there. There’s been two-love in the third set new balls. He went a little bit more. I missed two balls. It’s not easy to get back. He deserves where he is. Yeah, congrats to him.”
Nadal went onto win his 13th Roland Garros title without dropping a set, that included a dominant final victory over Novak Djokovic.
Jannik Sinner comments on Rafael Nadal’s achievements
Sinner paid tribute to Nadal after he retired at the Davis Cup Finals in Malaga last year.
However, after their 2020 Roland Garros match Sinner claimed that he did not pay too much attention to Nadal’s records, despite respecting the eventual champion.
“I don’t watch about records,” Sinner said at the time. “I know who is on the other side. I have a lot of respect of him. At the end you want to win. You go on court to play your tennis with your personality. You go on court trying to play your tennis, trying to win obviously.
“Yeah, but you have to have, for every player, the right respect on court and especially off court as well. I think he’s a great example for everyone. He’s nice. He’s a nice guy. I’ve practiced a little bit with him. It’s good.”
Sinner and Nadal went onto play each other on two further occasions, both on clay, including at Roland Garros again in 2021.
The match at the 2021 tournament in Paris was less competitive, and Sinner only surpassed his best result at Roland Garros last year when reaching the semi-finals.
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