Jannik Sinner confirmed himself as Wimbledon champion thanks to his success in the final against Sascha Zverev in 4 sets (6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 6-4), sealing the back-to-back at the Championships managed by only nine other tennis players in the history of tennis in the Open Era. The South Tyrolean thus got his hands on his fifth Slam (two Wimbledons, two Australian Opens and one US Open), or the 30th ATP title of his career, celebrating it with his 80th week at the top of the ranking which catapulted him into the all-time top 10 of number ones, on a par with Lleyton Hewitt. A reign – the third so far for the blue – destined to continue for a long time thanks to the distance of 5 thousand points from his pursuers, above all Zverev and Alcaraz, the latter still stopped in the pits due to a wrist problem that stopped him at the beginning of the clay season. The student of Vagnozzi and Cahill is now targeting the 101 weeks of an American tennis legend like Andre Agassi, a very close goal given that the gap from the others should guarantee him, barring sensational reversals, the title of ATP king at the end of the year for the second time after 2024.
At this point the question is legitimate: can Jannik Sinner become the most successful tennis player in the history of the “game”? To answer this, we tried to compare the palmares of the Big Three (Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic) at his own age, i.e. 24 years, 10 months and 27 days. Jimmi Connors and Ivan Lendl in the top 5 of the most titled with respectively 109 (absolute record) and 94 triumphs in their careers competed in the Tour with a tennis year schedule different from the current one (the Masters 1000, for example, was only introduced in 1990).
Without beating around the bush, the answer by looking at this table is yes: under current conditions the Italian can aspire to become the most successful tennis player ever. Jannik’s numbers are comparable to those of Novak Djokovic, the most successful player at Slam level (24). The Majors are certainly the most important benchmark in this type of analysis. The Serbian, still active at 39 years old, at the same point in his career had won one more Masters 1000 and one fewer ATP Finals, but had half as many weeks at the top of the rankings. This is because the Djoker he had recently entered one of the most famous rivalries in sport, that between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal who, especially at the beginning of their careers, cannibalized tournaments and rankings.
Exactly what is happening between Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz who at 23 years, 2 months and 8 days (almost two years younger than Sinnr) has already collected 26 titles, divided into 7 Slams, 8 Masters 1000, 10 ATP 500 and a 250 for a total of 66 weeks as No. 1. In X’s post below you can see the comparison between the two tennis phenomena.
No one can predict the future (for example, if a third wheel will enter the Sincaraz rivalry), but having reached more or less a third of his career, Jannik Sinner has all it takes to become the most successful tennis player in history. As well as Carlos Alcaraz.
