Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner bring down the curtain on tennis season they dominated – The Athletic

TURIN, Italy — The season had to end this way. Carlos Alcaraz battles his great rival Jannik Sinner on Sunday for the ATP Tour Finals championship — the latest showcase event featuring the world’s two best players.

They’ve already met in three Grand Slam finals earlier this year, with Alcaraz winning the US Open and French Open, and Sinner taking Wimbledon. They end a season they have completely dominated.

There are many subplots to their sixth meeting this year, but mainly it pits world No. 1 Alcaraz against by far and away the world’s best indoor player.

Sinner rubberstamped that status Saturday by winning his 30th straight indoor match, beating Alex de Minaur of Australia 7-5, 6-2. It was also Sinner’s ninth straight win at the ATP Tour Finals, dating back to last year’s event, and he hasn’t dropped a set during the streak.

The last time Sinner lost on an indoor hard court was the final of the 2023 edition, when Novak Djokovic inflicted a straight-sets defeat.

Alcaraz, by contrast, has found indoor hard courts the hardest to master. Going into this event, he had lost two of his last three matches indoors and is 13-5 over the past two seasons. He won an indoor tournament in Rotterdam, Netherlands at the start of this year, but his 72 percent win-rate on the surface pales in comparison to his 91 percent record in 2025.

He has been close to his best in Turin, winning all four of his matches, the last a 6-2, 6-4 win over Canada’s Félix Auger-Aliassime on Saturday night. The past week has arguably been the best Alcaraz has played indoors, at an event where he had previously won only three of his seven matches.

It’s a small sample size, but Alcaraz has made major improvements compared to his previous 11 indoor ATP Tour-level matches.

His baseline points won has gone up from 50 percent to 57 percent, while his steal score, the proportion of points won when defending, has also jumped up. This is an area in which Alcaraz is better than anyone, and this week it has been at 41 percent compared to 31 percent in those 11 previous indoor matches. He has even surpassed his tour-leading average of 38.4 percent for the past 12 months.

Numbers aside, Alcaraz has looked stellar this week. That has not generally been the case at the ATP Tour Finals, where he’s looked physically and/or mentally spent. He’s been focused and consistently spectacular. A volley on the stretch to break early in the first set against Auger-Aliassime had the crowd on their feet, while a ripped forehand crosscourt toward the end of it underlined how relaxed Alcaraz was feeling.

The second set was closer, but Alcaraz raised his level to make sure he got it done in straight sets and could get some rest ahead of Sunday’s final. He’s only dropped one set to get there and been broken three times.

The problem for Alcaraz is that even against a player he has a 10-5 winning record against, including 4-1 in matches this year, is that Sinner looks borderline unbeatable indoors.

De Minaur played one of the best matches of his career Saturday, but was ultimately blown away by a seven-game winning streak that turned a 5-4 lead for the Australian into a 7-5, 4-0 deficit.

Sinner has dropped just one set in his 14 indoor matches this year, having dropped two in the previous 16 of his winning streak. He is yet to be broken this tournament, a marked contrast with his struggles on serve at the U.S. Open, including in the final against Alcaraz when he made just 48 percent of his first serves, and then won only 69 percent of those points.

Against de Minaur Saturday, those figures were 75 percent and 84 percent. In total, Sinner has been broken six times in his 14 indoor matches this year. The Italian, who is brilliant everywhere, puts his nigh-on invincibility indoors to the absence of variables that can interfere with his laser-like focus and rhythmic hitting.

“I feel just very comfortable,” Sinner said in a news conference Saturday. “It suits my game maybe the best, because I’m someone who is quite flat and has this rhythm game, which gives me the confidence to keep going for shots and changing direction a little bit easier.

“I think that’s why indoor tennis makes me feel comfortable.”

As for how big a factor the conditions would be against Alcaraz, who he has lost to in all but one of their last eight meetings, he said: “Honestly every matchup is different … Of course, I feel comfortable on indoor hard court. Then we see.”

Sinner and Alcaraz are so far ahead of the rest of the field that often it feels as though even the loser doesn’t really lose, because by playing one another they improve and learn and pull further away from the pack.

But a win for Alcaraz Sunday, in Sinner’s home country, on his own worst surface and his opponent’s best, would feel significant. Even Alcaraz said he’d make Sinner the favorite for the final in a mixed zone, describing playing the Italian indoors as “one of the most difficult challenges that we have in tennis right now.

“I mean, the No. 1 means that I’ve been playing really good during the whole season, in the whole surfaces. He’s playing the best on indoor court, we’re playing in front of his home crowd. So I would say he’s the favorite,” Alcaraz said in a mixed zone on Saturday night.

He added with a smile, “I don’t want to believe it, but I would say he is the favorite for tomorrow I guess.”

Not that Sinner will be thinking in those terms.

“Just hope for a good match,” he said. Recent history suggests he is unlikely to be disappointed.