US Open: Carlos Alcaraz vs. Jannik Sinner already an all-time duel, and it’s pushing tennis to new heights

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NEW YORK — The men’s US Open final on Sunday afternoon (2 p.m. ET) is one of those rare sporting events where the stakes require little explanation. For the eighth straight Grand Slam, either Carlos Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner will emerge with the trophy, and this time the winner will leave Arthur Ashe Stadium as the No. 1 player in the world.

But this new-age rivalry, which is inching toward the pantheon of John McEnroe-Bjorn Borg, Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi and Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal among the great matchups in tennis history, isn’t just about two players separating themselves from the field.

They are, in many ways, pushing the entire sport to places it’s never gone before.

“The best players in the world are always the best athletes,” Patrick Mouratoglou, the former coach for several top players, including Serena Williams, told Yahoo Sports. “But what’s very modern in their game is the consistency, which is crazy. You have two guys who have no flaws.”

It might sound like hyperbole, but in tennis, it’s quickly becoming conventional wisdom.

On a recent episode of the “Nothing Major” podcast featuring four of the top American men of the previous decade, former top-15 player Sam Querrey called Sinner “the best ball striker of all time … the cleanest, best, purest ball striker the game of tennis has ever seen.”

As part of the same conversation, the longtime American No. 1 John Isner called it “some of the highest [level] tennis from both of them the sport has ever seen.”

On Andy Roddick’s “Served” podcast, longtime coach, ESPN analyst and former top-10 player Brad Gilbert said he expected there would be a period of maybe three years where men’s tennis would be in a bit of a transition out of the Novak Djokovic era with several different players winning Grand Slams.

Instead, we have arrived at the end of 2025 with two players meeting in the finals of three consecutive Slams for the first time in the Open era.

“If you’d have told me at the start of 2024 that Djokovic wasn’t going to win one [more], I was like, ‘No way,’” Gilbert said. “But it’s not like Alcaraz and Sinner have been given anything. These two guys have taken it and they’ve run with it.

“If you put Andre [Agassi] and Djokovic in a blender, you get Sinner. His level is outrageous right now. I’m shocked. And I think the fact that he has somebody in Alcaraz that he knows that if he doesn’t get better, he might eclipse him.”

Since 1968, when professionals replaced amateurs in the Grand Slams, men’s tennis has been a sport where a small group of players usually separate from the pack and win most of the big titles.

One of the main differences in the 1980s and 90s was surface specialization, where clay courters like Thomas Muster or Gustavo Kuerten could win French Opens while Sampras only made one semifinal in his career. Conversely, a big server like Richard Krajicek managed to win a Wimbledon while never making another Slam final.

Thanks to racket technology and a bit of homogenization of surfaces, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic ended that narrative, each winning the career Grand Slam and 20-plus majors.

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Now, while Sinner is clearly the world’s dominant hardcourt player, with 27 consecutive wins at the U.S. Open and Australian Open heading into Sunday’s final. He only needs a French to complete his set — and was within a point of doing it this year.

Alcaraz won his first major here in 2022 but seems to be equally at ease on clay and grass, where his touch shots get rewarded a bit more than on hard courts. The Australian is the only one he lacks, and there’s little doubt he’ll eventually get there — if he can get by Sinner, of course.

But the reason they are both on track to finish among the all-time greats is the combination of power and movement that evolved from the Big Three and seems to be headed to another level entirely as they push each other to get better. Not only do they hit shots as well as the great players of any era, their ability to cover the court means it will always take a special effort to beat them over the course of a long best-of-five set match.

“You see Alcaraz hit the ball into the corner and it looks like it’s a clean winner, but Sinner not only gets there, he’ll hit an aggressive shot in return,” said Stan Smith, the former Wimbledon and US Open champion. “It’s really amazing.”

If there was one weakness for Sinner before the last two years, it was his endurance. The spindly 6-foot-3 Italian would often cramp or physically break down in longer matches but seems to have broken that threshold as he’s matured into his mid-20s.

The main issue with Alcaraz, who at 22 could become the youngest man to win six Grand Slam titles, has been focus and shot selection, which perhaps isn’t surprising for someone so gifted. He has so many tools at his disposal, he often doesn’t know which ones to use.

But as Alcaraz has reached this US Open final without dropping a set, that criticism doesn’t seem to be as valid.

“It wasn’t a secret,” Alcaraz said. “[Sinner] has spoken about physical condition that he had to improve, and the last two years he’s improved a lot. His matches are demanding physically and he’s able to play 100 percent during two, three, four hours and that’s the biggest improvement he’s made. For me I think it’s the consistency and not having ups and downs in the matches. I realize how important it is.”

The question is how far they can keep pushing the sport and each other, and whether someone else will come up to join them. We got a preview of what was coming in 2022 when they played a five-hour, 15-minute marathon quarterfinal that was arguably the most compelling tennis match of the decade — until this year’s five-hour, 29-minute French Open final.

While there’s no guarantee they can reproduce that level of drama regularly, Sunday’s US Open final will already be their 15th meeting (Alcaraz leads 9-5) with many more likely in store over the next 15 or 20 Slam finals.

At the moment, they just seem that impenetrable.

“In other generations, the top players had qualities that were incredible but there were holes in their games,” Mouratoglou said. “There was a tactic. I mean, it was extremely difficult to make it successful, but there was one. Against these guys, where do you play? How do you play? You can play forehand or backhand, high or low, fast or not fast, moving them or not moving them, bringing them to the net — everywhere they’re performing at the highest level. They are way, way above everybody else. But the game is constantly progressing. The fact they put tennis at that level of physicality and quality, I think will push everyone to be better.”