Jannik Sinner found his next frontier of tennis domination. Carlos Alcaraz wants to join him

Welcome back to the Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, there were Sunshine Triples, a lot of very potent serving, and a clip that exposed how tennis needs to bless its mess more often. 

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What do Sinner and Alcaraz’s focuses say about the direction of men’s tennis?

Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz had very different results at the Miami Open, but the two best male players in the world are looking to get every edge they can find in the same area: The serve.

Sinner, who won the tournament and with it his first Sunshine Double, has sharpened his delivery in 2026, hitting the ball both faster than he did in 2025 and closer to the lines. Sinner, who is 6 feet 3 inches tall, finds it a little easier to blend speed with accuracy than his 5-11 / 6 feet rival. As of the end of the Miami Open, his combination of speed and precision is the most devastating among the ATP Tour’s top 10:

This has offset a decline in Sinner’s supremacy in longer exchanges. On average, he wins 57 percent of rallies that go nine shots or longer, but in 2026, that figure is down to 53 percent (the average for the men’s tour as a whole). A four-per cent shift sounds small, but in a sport where players win just a shade over half the points they play on average, it is not.

The Italian’s baseline game did not get worse in any meaningful sense during the early part of 2026, and his rally tolerance, blend of straight-line speed and jumping topspin, and elastic defense remain elite, but his groundstrokes appeared less penetrating. The data backs this up: There has been a modest decrease in speed on his forehand in 2026, associated with his hitting slightly higher over the net, but also while making more errors.

But Sinner has offset that decline with his brutal serving, which has brought a one-percent increase in points won on rallies between zero and four shots. That may not sound enough to offset a four-percent decrease, but it is, because the shortest rallies have the highest frequency. Sinner has played 1,229 points of between zero and four shots in 2026, compared to 199 points of over nine shots.

In the same time period, Alcaraz’s win percentage in longer exchanges is 57 percent, up from his average of 52. The world No. 1 has also developed his serve in the past year, making it a more reliable release valve under pressure, but his approach to the shot is not the same as Sinner’s.

“A lot of players focus on winning the point directly with the serve, but I’m sometimes I’m just trying to hit a good serve thinking about the second shot,” Alcaraz said during a news conference at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.

Accordingly, 190 of Alcaraz’s first serves have not come back in 2026, and he has won a further 250 first-serve points. For Sinner, the figures are 275 and 204. This has given Sinner a 9-percent edge in proportion of first-serve points won (as well as proportion of service points won overall) but the most significant disparity is in unreturned serves: 32 percent for Alcaraz to 49 for Sinner.

Alcaraz’s coach, Samuel López, is aware that this gap needs to close, even as Alcaraz leads Sinner at the top of the world rankings.

“The serve still needs to keep improving, not in terms of power, but in terms of precision and percentages,” he said during a Spanish interview with Eurosport.

“On return, he is number one or number two, but on serve, he is a bit further behind.”

For the recurrent talk of courts slowing down (they aren’t), rallies getting longer (they aren’t) and balls getting harder to hit off the court (they did, for a bit), the reality of elite men’s tennis in 2026 is that serve advantage is the most meaningful advantage.

Novak Djokovic reinvented himself as an elite spot-server to offset his physical limits in his late career. When the top two in the world are optimizing in that direction, they are only going to get scarier.

—  James Hansen

What’s even better than a Sunshine Double?

Aryna Sabalenka and Sinner‘s Miami Open titles did not just complete their respective Sunshine Doubles. By adding to their trophies from the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, the women’s world No. 1 and men’s world No. 2 completed the first Sunshine Double across men’s and women’s singles since 2016, when Victoria Azarenka won the women’s singles titles and Novak Djokovic the men’s.

This year, Kateřina Siniaková and Taylor Townsend made it a triple double. The outstanding pair in women’s doubles swept past Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani 7-6(0), 6-1 Sunday to complete the same feat as Sabalenka and Sinner in women’s doubles, seizing control of what had been a tight match when Paolini and Errani came out cold following a rain delay.

The win followed Siniaková and Townsend’s triumph over Anna Danilina and Aleksandra Krunić at Indian Wells, and gave the duo their fifth title as a pair, including two majors. It also extended Townsend’s individual win streak in doubles to 14, because she won another title (the ATX Open in Austin) with Australia’s Storm Hunter.

What did a strange segment say about tennis and mess?

The breakout media moment of the Miami Open came from a Tennis Channel segment that featured guest commentator and a player well known for her candid personality, Danielle Collins, telling a story about rejecting fellow player Corentin Moutet after the Frenchman allegedly flirted with her.

The network leaned into it as a somewhat saucy attempt at humor: Collins was arch throughout, her desk-mate Steve Weissman eagerly introduced her tale as “Storytime with Danielle” and chintzy lullaby music tinkled away in the background.

It was a divisive clip. Some fans were delighted to see fusty tennis loosening its shirt collar a bit, while others felt national television wasn’t the place to air out the contents of one’s DMs, especially with Moutet having no right of reply and neither player offering proof of the exchange. The combustible Frenchman went as far as issuing an outright denial on X:

😂😂 how can I unfollow you when I never followed you😂@TennisChannel how can you let someone say BS like this on tv

You followed me

You asked me for mixed dubs

And I’ve never even followed you😂

You ready to say anything so people talks about you

You should learn how to love… https://t.co/plDXqd1wzQ

— Corentin Moutet (@moutet99) March 22, 2026

The divide is not a tennis-specific problem; critics of NBA media for years have gone after pundits for focusing too much on off-court drama and not devoting enough time to dissecting on-court action. But there’s a difference between the NBA (and other mainstream sports) and tennis: the highlights are everywhere. Clips of the NBA’s most entertaining on-court drama are eminently available on social media.

That isn’t quite the case in tennis, where media rights are so fractured that the WTA can’t post clips of a match from a Grand Slam and a player can’t publish highlights from her own match on her social media page. That leaves the sport already working from a deficit when it comes to fighting for fans’ attention online.

It is easy to throw up a 15-second clip of a dunk or a great soccer goal, but the brilliance of a great tennis shot often requires a viewer to watch an entire point — sometimes two or three — to understand why the highlight is worthy. The short highlights which the tours and Grand Slams post on social media also cannot possibly encompass the ebbs and flows of a match.

Controversial clips are another way in for new fans, but tournaments can suppress highlights that brush against the sport’s prim and proper reputation. Earlier this month, Kateřina Siniaková slipped on match point against Camila Osorio at the Miami Open and left the court in a hurry, upset by a crowd largely cheering against her. Osorio was nonplussed. The clip had all the tension that makes the sport so great — and no official account posted it.

The same has been true of other controversial moments, with viral clips frequently copyright-striked in service of protecting the rights contracts that help fund the sport.

If tennis is looking to appeal to a younger, broader fanbase on social media — as it seems to be, based on the Collins-Moutet segment and other stints like a depressingly hokey, tennis-themed dating show the U.S. Open rolled out during last year’s tournament — the answer might be using what tennis already has. Let exceptional highlights and clips of natural, on-court controversy flourish online, rather than manufacturing drama.

— Ava Wallace

🏆 The winners of the week

🎾 ATP: 

🏆 Jannik Sinner (2) def. Jiří Lehečka 6-4, 6-4 to win the Miami Open (1,000) in Miami. It is his 26th career title.

🎾 WTA:

🏆 Aryna Sabalenka (1) def. Coco Gauff (4) 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 to win the Miami Open (1,000) in Miami. It is her 24th career title.

📈📉 On the rise / Down the line

📈 Coco Gauff moves up one place from No. 4 to No. 3 after reaching the Miami Open final, swapping places with Iga Świątek.

📈 Alexander Zverev ascends one spot from No. 4 to No. 3 after reaching the semifinals of the same tournament.

📈 Sorana Cîrstea reenters the top 30 for the first time since summer 2024, after rising six spots from No. 35 to No. 29.

📈 Rafael Jodar rises 20 spots from No. 109 to No. 89, a career high.

📉 Jakub Menšík falls 13 places from No. 13 to No. 26. after dropping 950 points for last year’s Miami Open title.

📉 Alexandra Eala drops 16 places from No. 29 to No. 45.

📉 Matteo Berrettini tumbles 23 spots from No. 68 to No. 91.

📉 Ashlyn Krueger falls 24 spots from No. 79 to No. 103.

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP 

📍Houston: U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships (250) featuring Ben Shelton, Tommy Paul, Frances Tiafoe, Learner Tien.

📍Marrakech, Morocco: Grand Prix Hassan II (250) featuring Corentin Moutet, Tallon Griekspoor, Matteo Berrettini, Tomáš Macháč.

📍Bucharest, Romania: Bucharest Open (250) featuring Gabriel Diallo, Sebástian Báez, Adrian Mannarino, Nuno Borges.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV

🎾 WTA

📍Charleston, S.C.: Charleston Open (500) featuring Jessica Pegula, Belinda Bencic, Madison Keys, Leylah Fernandez.

📍Bogotá, Colombia: Copa Colsanitas (250) featuring Marie Bouzková, Camila Osorio, Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro, Francesca Jones.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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