Cabeza, corazón y cojones; head, heart and balls.
It is a nugget of wisdom bequeathed to Carlos Alcaraz by his grandfather and tattooed in shorthand on his left wrist, and it has never felt more pertinent than it did on Sunday at Roland Garros, where the 22-year-old Spaniard saved three championship points against Jannik Sinner, the Italian world No 1, to win the longest French Open final in history.
After dividing the past six majors equally between them, the pair had already inherited the mantle of the Big Three. But their epic first meeting in a grand slam final brought vibrant confirmation that tennis has a life beyond Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, Alcaraz recovering from two sets to love down for the first time in his career to prevail in a fifth-set tiebreak after five hours and 29 minutes of pure theatre.
In staving off three match points, Alcaraz achieved a feat not seen in the men’s game since 1927, when Henri Cochet came within a point of defeat on six occasions before finally prevailing against fellow “French musketeer” Jean Borotra in five sets.
That statistic alone is indicative of the historic nature of what was undeniably the greatest comeback in a grand slam final since the open era began in 1968. Djokovic saved two match points to deny Federer a 21st major at Wimbledon in 2019, but the most obvious point of comparison came in 2004, when Gastón Gaudio prevailed in an all-Argentine Roland Garros final, likewise saving a pair of championship points after dropping the first two sets against Guillermo Coria.
That, though, was a nervous, cramp-ridden affair; this was tennis of an entirely different order. Alcaraz initially found Sinner every bit as impenetrable as the Italian’s previous 20 grand slam opponents. Yet the Spaniard somehow summoned the will and the level to force a decider in which Sinner displayed extraordinary reserves of physical and mental fortitude, defying cramp and then defying Alcaraz, who served for the title at 5-4, to take the contest down to the wire.
Only at the death was Alcaraz finally able to pull clear, the defending champion riding the momentum from a jaw-dropping backhand pass in his final service game to produce a near-flawless exhibition of shot-making in the climactic tiebreak. A brilliant running forehand sealed a victory for the ages, 4-6, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (10-2), and sent rapturous observers scurrying for superlatives, with some even comparing the match to the 1980 and 2008 Wimbledon finals between, respectively, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe and Nadal-Federer.
“If people put our match in that table, it’s a huge honour for me,” said Alcaraz after sealing his fifth grand slam title. “I don’t know if it is at the same level as those matches because those matches are, you know, the history of tennis and the history of the sport. So I let people talk about it, if for them [the matches] are almost the same.
“But for me, watching from outside or realising what that match is in the history of tennis, I don’t know if our match is in the same table as them. But [I’m] just happy to put our match and our names in the history of the grand slams, in the history of Roland Garros. I [leave] the discussion to the people.”
So what of that discussion? The drama of the denouement was undeniable, and both men produced some majestic tennis. For two sets, Sinner was almost unplayable; by the end, it was Alcaraz who was untouchable. Yet it should also be acknowledged that, until the latter stages, they rarely played their best tennis at the same time. As Sinner marched into a seemingly unassailable lead, suffocating Alcaraz with the quality of his serving and deep, central returns, which denied the Spaniard the angles on which he thrives, the heightened sense of anticipation surrounding the contest dwindled.
Put it this way: had Sinner gone on to seal the title in four sets, the match would never have been mentioned in the same breath as Borg-McEnroe 1980 or Federer-Nadal 2008, both of which featured genre-defining fourth-set tiebreaks in which match points were saved and individual points forever seared in the memory. The equivalent shootout here was relatively devoid of jeopardy, two of Sinner’s three points coming early, and from unforced errors.
Instead, the pivotal moments came when Sinner made three straight errors with Alcaraz serving at 3-5, 0-40. Duly emboldened, the Spaniard slammed down an ace, smoked a forehand down the line, and cupped a hand to his ear, drinking in the acclaim of a crowd desperate to see more. Alcaraz duly obliged, breaking with some scintillating all-court play, and from that moment on the fascination became whether he could finish what he had started, staging a repeat of his comeback from a similarly parlous position against Sinner at the 2022 US Open.
So while the score might have evoked memories of those classic Wimbledon finals, the context was as different as the surface and the protagonists; a new match, for a new generation. And perhaps that is as it should be: not every chapter in the sport’s evolution has to echo the previous one, as Sinner pointed out.
“I think every rivalry is different, no?” Sinner said of the contest’s place in the pantheon. “Back in the days, they played a little bit different tennis. Now, you know, the ball is going fast. It’s very physical. It’s slightly different from my point of view, you cannot compare.”
Everyone will have their own opinion, of course, and many of the sport’s luminaries were in no doubt about what they were seeing.
“They’re playing at a pace that’s not human,” enthused TV pundit and three-time French Open champion Mats Wilander. “Insane level,” Stan Wawrinka declared on social media. McEnroe even suggested both men would have been favourites against peak Nadal – proof, if nothing else, that the American analyst’s aptitude for going too far burns as bright as it did in his playing days. But Alcaraz probably had it about right when he remarked that, good as the match was, he’d seen better.
“To say it was one of the greatest finals in the history of the grand slams, it’s really high status,” he told TNT Sports. “I have to say that there have been better finals. I’m going to say one: Novak [Djokovic] against Rafa [Nadal], the final of the Australian Open [in 2012]. That level of final is pretty high. In history, there have been better finals I guess. But I’m just really happy to put my name into one of the best finals, the longest finals, here in Roland Garros.”
Few could have guessed what was coming in the early stages. While Sinner was clinical, Alcaraz seemed to be all out of the stardust he normally sprinkles on these occasions. Even when he won the third set it felt more like a gesture of defiance, a minor skirmish won, than the start of a more wholesale turnaround.
While Alcaraz’s spirit was admirable, it was still difficult to imagine Sinner letting the match slip. The Italian’s serve dipped markedly in that middle set – he won just 44% of points behind his first delivery, compared with 70% for the match as a whole – and the likelihood remained that he would find a solution.
True, the flashes of brilliance from Alcaraz’s racket were becoming more frequent. But the defending champion was still overpressing, trying to force the play rather than construct points with an endgame in mind. A case in point came at the start of the third, when a searing crosscourt forehand fell narrowly wide, costing him a break. Alcaraz gestured frustratedly to his box, evidently mystified by the imprecision of his baseline bombs.
By the latter stages of the decider, however, the Spaniard was beginning to hits his targets with ominous frequency. There was a setback when he failed to serve out the match at 5-4, but that was mainly down to Sinner, who had never previously won a match spanning more than three hours and 50 minutes, but came within two points of doing so with Alcaraz serving at 5-6, 15-30. The Italian, who had shown signs of cramp early in the set, threw the kitchen sink at his opponent in that game. It was an incredible effort, given this was just his second tournament after a three-month drug ban, but Alcaraz remained immovable.
Only Borg and Nadal have won five grand slam titles at a younger age, a timeline all the more remarkable for the fact that he reached that milestone at 22 years, one month and three days – exactly the same age Nadal was when he achieved the same feat.
“I have to realise that I’ve done it, I think that’s the first step,” Alcaraz said of that unlikely conjunction. “The coincidence of winning my fifth grand slam at the same age as Rafa Nadal, I’m going to say that’s destiny, I guess.
“It is a stat that I’m going to keep for me forever, winning the fifth grand slam at the same time as Rafa, my idol, my inspiration. It’s a huge honour, honestly. You know, hopefully it’s not going to stop like this.”
After the greatest comeback in living memory, that seems unlikely. Alcaraz showed the mental strength to keep fighting when all looked lost, the spirit to work his way back into contention, and the courage to play his best tennis when the need was greatest. Head, heart, cojones: just as his grandfather has always told him.