Sinner vs Alcaraz steal all eyes in Paris

The Roland Garros 2024 men’s team will find out its two finalists this Friday, in a day of semis in which The highlight will be, without a doubt, the duel between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcarazprotagonists of a rivalry that promises to capture the attention of the tennis world in the coming years.

The Italian, virtual number 1 in the world (he will officially occupy that place on Monday), and the Spanish, third in the ranking, will collide on the brick dust of the Philippe Chatrier not before 9.30 in Argentina, in which it will be a kind of “early ending.” And then (not before 12.30), the German Alexander Zverevfourth favorite, will face the Norwegian Casper Ruud, seventh. With television from ESPN2 and Star+.

Sinner, 22, and Alcaraz, 21, will play the most spectacular duel, the one that all spectators have been waiting to see since the draw crossed their paths in the semifinals.

Both born in the new century, both already know what it is to lift a Grand Slam (the Italian, in January in Australia; the Spanish, in the US Open 2022 and Wimbledon 2023), they demonstrated enormous tennis and mental strength and fueled the history between the two with epic battles.

It is enough to remember the quarterfinals of Flushing Meadows 2022: five hours and 15 minutes of fighting, a match point saved by the Spaniard and a victory that put him in the final in which he later inaugurated his record in the category and became the youngest world number 1 of all time.

Carlitos will play his second consecutive semifinal in Paris, a tournament in which he surpassed himself year after year. Third round in his debut in 2021, quarterfinals the following year and semifinals last, when cramps overtook him against Novak Djokovic.

This year he arrived in Paris at a time of doubt due to an injury to his right arm that complicated his clay court tour. He started out hesitant, afraid of forcing his arm, but as he passed rounds he gained confidence and displayed more and more of his usual explosion, although his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, assured that he is still “at 95 percent”.

Sinner was one more year ago, a promising tennis player who still had many improvements to make on slow courts, despite the fact that on that surface he had achieved his first resounding results on the circuit, in 2020, when he reached the quarterfinals. In the second round of the last edition he played five sets against the very tough German Daniel Altmaier who eliminated him without generating any major surprise.

In 2024, everything is different, because the Italian took a qualitative leap, translated into his victory at the Australian Open after defeating the Russian Daniil Medvedev in the final. And in the first stretch of the season he also won Rotterdam and Miami and lost a single game. A hip injury also did not allow him to gain much rhythm in the dust tournaments prior to Roland Garros, but doubts were dispelled when he stepped onto the Bois de Boulogne courts.

For the first time he surpassed the quarterfinals in the year of his debut. Djokovic’s retirement left him number 1 (he will be the first Italian to occupy that position). And now he has before him the duel that could open the second final of a great team.

Grief comes loaded with high doses of uncertainty. They are tied 4-4 head-to-head against each other. The two have beaten their rival once in a Grand Slam and both arrive after overcoming an injury that cut short their preparation for Roland Garros. Both grew as they progressed in the tournament, they gave up a set on the way to the semifinal and had a solid display in their last match.

Who is the favorite? Neither of them wants that role and no one is able to venture with a clear prognosis.

On the other side of the draw, two tennis players who have been knocking on the door of a Grand Slam for years, but who have not yet achieved it, will collide. Ruud is the most unexpected semi-finalist of the four, even though he has played in the last two finals.

As in previous editions, the Norwegian arrives with a surprising service record on clay, crowned with two titles, Barcelona and Geneva, but also as the player with the most victories of the year, 39, also the one with the most It has on this surface, 21.

But his strength suffers greatly when he faces rivals from the top of the ranking, although this year he can boast of having beaten Djokovic in the Monte Carlo semifinals, where he ended up losing the final against the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas.

The Scandinavian, 25 years old, will arrive at this Friday’s duel after three days without competition, because the Serbian’s withdrawal exempted him from the quarterfinal duel.

Before starting the tournament, Zverev was without a doubt the fittest player at the moment, because he had just won his sixth Masters 1,000 in Rome and because the rest of the favorites had been very irregular on clay.

But as the games went by, things have become even. Although he has had eleven victories, the German got involved in two five-set duels in the third round against the Dutchman Tallon Griekspoor and in the second round against the Danish Holger Rune, while the level of other players has been increasing.

But at 27 years old he arrives at a great moment of maturity to his fourth consecutive semifinal in Paris, in search of his second Grand Slam final four years after the one he lost in the United States against the Austrian Dominic Thiem.

With information from EFE