Carlos Alcaraz reaches his first French Open final by beating Jannik Sinner in 5 sets in 4 hours

PARIS– PARIS (AP) — Carlos Alcaraz achieved its first French Open final by defeat Jannik Sinner 2-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 on Friday, making the 21-year-old Spaniard the youngest man to reach a Grand Slam title match on three surfaces.

Alcaraz won the 2022 US Open on hard court, 2023 Wimbledon on grass and will now contest the championship on red clay at Roland Garros after coming back to eliminate Sinner in a grueling match that lasted 4 hours and 9 minutes.

“It’s one of the toughest games I’ve ever played, for sure,” said Alcaraz, who actually won two fewer points than Sinner, 147-145. “The hardest matches I played in my short career were against Jannik.”

Alcaraz, third placed, will face Alexander Zverev or Casper Ruud in Sunday’s final. It is the first French Open men’s title match since 2004 without Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic or Roger Federer.

Djokovic was the defending champion in Paris but withdrew before the quarterfinals after tearing the meniscus in his right knee and undergoing surgery this week. Having failed to return to the final, he will fall from the top of the ATP rankings, allowing Sinner to move up from second place despite his loss on Friday.

Sinner entered the semifinals with a 13-0 Grand Slam record in 2024 after winning the Australian Open in January. But the 22-year-old Italian also appeared in Paris with a persistent hip injury that forced him to sit out the clay-court tournament in Rome last month.

No. 4 Zverev of Germany and No. 7 Ruud of Norway were scheduled to meet in the second semifinal on Friday. Zverev’s domestic violence case in Berlin ended earlier in the day when he reached an out-of-court settlement with his accuser, an ex-girlfriend.

Alcaraz vs. Sinner began in the afternoon under a blue sky, with not a cloud in sight and the court enveloped in sunlight.

They are seen as the future of men’s tennis. The present isn’t so bad either. While this wasn’t necessarily the most aesthetically pleasing of their nine head-to-head clashes – Alcaraz now leads 5-4 – and they combined for 102 unforced errors, there were moments of brilliance that sparked duels accompanied by clapping chants from each man. first name of the Court crowd Philippe Chatrier.

Both men had physical problems in the third set, but it was Sinner who won. Alcaraz flexed his right hand when he began to cramp; Sinner received a massage on his right forearm and left leg. It reminded me of last year’s French Open semifinals, when Alcaraz got off to a great start against Djokovic but was hit in the third set by full-body cramps that made the rest of the match anticlimactic.

“I learned from last year’s game against Djokovic, when I was in the same position as today,” Alcaraz said. “I know that, at this moment, you have to be calm, you have to continue, because the cramp will go away. You have to stay there, fighting.”

In fact, he never wavered, often using drop shots – sometimes to gain points immediately, sometimes to set up curling lobs, sometimes to clear the way for deft passes or his thunderous forehand.

In the fifth set, with shadows covering more than half the court, Alcaraz glided forward until he was able to extend his arm to hit a backhand winner for a break point. A forehand winner – one of his 30 in the match – made it 2-0 at the 3 1/2 hour mark, earning a shout of “Let’s go!” from his coach, 2003 French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero.

Soon it was 3-0 and Alcaraz was on its way.

Both players hit the ball with such force that the strikes from the unstrung ball elicited gasps from the spectators in the middle of the points.

Sinner, with his rust-colored shirt a few shades darker than the clay, came out ready at the start of the match, almost missing, sliding rather than crawling along the baseline, stretching his long limbs to reach almost everything Alcaraz offered. Alcaraz, his right arm covered by a white sleeve, threw a powerful shot for a corner, punctuated by a grunt, and Sinner somehow managed to reach it, deflect it and make a mistake.

Sinner led 4-0 and it took Alcaraz 20 minutes of effort to simply put a “1” next to his name on the scoreboard.

The key statistic from that set: On points that lasted four strokes or less, each player made 13. But on those that lasted longer, Sinner had a 19-8 advantage. Alcaraz would begin to try and shorten the points as the game progressed.

The second set started unfavorably for Alcaraz, who trailed 2-0. But he did not go silently. He turned things around when he needed to, using a five-game streak to take control of that set.

And then, after Sinner led two sets to one, Alcaraz pushed proceedings into a fifth, closing the fourth with a crosscourt backhand, then raising his right fist and shaking it.

With his shots somehow gaining enthusiasm, and the crowd somehow growing louder, Alcaraz never let his early lead in the final set diminish.

“You have to find joy (while) suffering. That’s the key. Even more so on clay, here at Roland Garros. Long rallies. Four-hour departures. Five sets,” said Alcaraz. “You have to fight. You have to suffer. But, as I have told my team many, many times, you have to enjoy suffering.”

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