Coach Simone Vagnozzi has underlined that Jannik Sinner’s goal is to beat the top players and not just to play well against them. At the start of the 2023 season, Sinner was hoping to make his big Grand Slam breakthrough at the Australian Open.
In Melbourne, Sinner reached the round-of-16 before world No 3 Stefanos Tsitsipas handed him a 6-4 6-4 3-6 4-6 6-3 loss. “I have to be honest, just playing honorably against the top 5, it’s not our goal. We went out onto the court (against Tsitsipas) to win, being aware that we had worked hard during the winter weeks.
It was a particular match, exactly one year after when we started working together right after also facing each other to Tsitsipas, so surely there was some pressure and in fact in the first two sets surely he could have done something more, but he was very close, as he had been the last three times,” Vagnozzi told La Gazzetta dello Sport.
Sinner again failed to beat a top player at a Grand Slam tournament
Sinner has established himself as someone who constantly reaches the second week of a Grand Slam. Last year, Sinner made the Australian Open quarterfinal before losing to Tsitsipas in straight sets.
In the 2022 Wimbledon quarterfinal, Sinner was up by two sets before Novak Djokovic stormed back to win in five sets. At the US Open, Sinner also reached the quarterfinal and again suffered a heartbreaking defeat – he missed out on a match point against Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set thriller.
Sinner, 21, has had multiple Grand Slam quarterfinal appearances but has yet to reach a Grand Slam semifinal or final. But if Sinner wants to go a step further in Grand Slams, he will have to figure out how to beat the top players in the latter stages. It remains to be seen how well can Sinner do at the French Open.
