Written By Anthony Hirsch
In a chaotic ATP season to date, Jannik Sinner has been the most consistent, and arguably the best, player in the world. Jannik brandishes a remarkable 28-2 record on the 2024 season so far. This came with a streak of 16 matches won to start the year, which of course included his incredible maiden grand slam victory at the Australian Open. Unfortunately for Sinner however, things are not as positive as they may seem from those stats and results.
Sinner’s first tumble of the season came against Carlos Alcaraz in Indian Wells, where Jannik experienced his first loss since the final of the ATP finals last year. The match was played to a high quality from both, particularly Alcaraz, but Sinner did experience some physical discomforts. He was flexing his left leg in the second half of the match, losing a little bit of his intensity, and he also undeniably hurt his elbow trying to hunt down an Alcaraz volley on a crucial point in their third set.
He recovered very well from these injuries, however, in Miami where he scored his second Masters title, beating players such as Daniil Medvedev and Grigor Dimitrov enroute (losing just 7 games to both players combined, playing truly superb tennis). Jannik continued some great form into Monte-Carlo, moving as well as ever and striking the ball beautifully/. He would even implement a notable amount of drop shots, adding more and more chess strategies and moves into his game to stay one step ahead of the rest of the field. However, in a controversial semifinal against Stefanos Tsitsipas where a wrong line call stopped Jannik from being up a double break, he experiences his second loss of the season. He began cramping and stated himself that he believes it is a consequence of the line call because it “goes into the nervous side of the brain.” Regardless of what you think of the situation and how it affected or didn’t affect the ultimate result, Tsitsipas played a fantastic event, and Jannik suffered another loss with some clear physical discomforts.
These discomforts are not the health concerns that ultimately have plagued a question mark on the Italian world #2 stepping a foot onto Court Phillipe-Chartier this year. In Madrid, where Sinner would play another two-week long high-intensity Masters event, his right hip began giving him some trouble. This became clear when he played Pavel Kotov in the Round of 32. He would win 6-2 7-5 but not without a big battle in the second set. He scraped through Karen Khachanov for a place in the quarterfinals, but the hip pain increased more and more as the week went. Eventually, he withdrew in the quarterfinals before he would have played fellow rising youngster Felix Auger-Aliassime.
He said he was following doctors’ advice to not play as to not make the situation once. A few days later, Jannik withdrew from the Rome Masters- which would have been yet another grueling two-week Masters event. On the day after, Jannik says “If it wasn’t healed, I would be forced to stop playing for a long time.” This caused quite a lot of concern from fans. From that point on, there was a large period of silence for more than a week. Sinner went on the record with his hopes still rather high, saying “I just try to get back to 100% as soon as possible, hopefully trying to play in Paris, and then Wimbledon, and then all the rest.” However, concerns were not eased when La Gazzetta reported a couple days ago on May 14 that doctors have recommended Jannik Sinner to rest and potentially not compete at Roland Garros, as to not risk his hip injury becoming chronic. It’s been said that a decision will be made later this week.
So those are the events that have transpired to this point, and the chances of Jannik competing at Roland Garros have seemed to become dimmer and dimmer as time has gone by. If Sinner does play, and if he can play in decent to good health, then he will be absolutely one of the top favorites in the event, if not the top. This is especially true as many other players are either dealing with injuries or lacking good form. The former is true for his same-generation rival Carlos Alcaraz, who is dealing with an arm injury, which also caused him to miss the Rome Masters. He will like his chances, especially as he has looked quite good on clay in the two clay events he has played this season, with his shot tolerance and defense as good as it’s ever been. The best player in the world, most would argue, since last year’s final Major, Jannik has been a force and being the champion of the last grand slam held, many are curious to see how he will do on arguably his worst surface. For the reasons I laid out, he will do quite well- especially with his improvements in the best-of-five format we saw in the Australian Open. He had his breakthrough at Roland Garros and made the second week three on three consecutive occasions as well. But this success will only be true this year if his body is there. Unfortunately, I am personally not feeling confident in this fact. Sinner is very careful and calculated. He takes his time with building out success in his career, and if there truly is substantiated concern for not making his hip injury worse, then I do not think he will play. If he does, however, in any decent shape and form, then I would have said a few weeks ago that I would pick him to lose in the semifinals stage to a name such as Carlos Alcaraz or Novak Djokovic or perhaps another. But if he plays Roland Garros, his chances for the title look better. This is because at this point, a lot of my predictions for his tournament lay on how the health of other players, such as Alcaraz, look. Hopefully we get as many of the top players possible healthy. Only time will tell, as unpredictability looms over the Roland Garros event.
