Jannik Sinner continues to be Alex de Minaur’s personal boogeyman. In a match that felt more like a recurring nightmare for the Australian, Sinner dismantled him in straight sets, 7-5, 6-2, to cruise back into the ATP Finals championship match. This marks the third straight year the Italian has made it to the final, and frankly, is anyone surprised? He’s playing on home turf in Turin, with a crowd that roars every time he so much as adjusts his shorts.
For De Minaur, this has to be a special kind of hell. Imagine knowing you have to face a guy who has beaten you every single time you’ve played. That’s 13-0 now. Not once, not twice, but thirteen times, Sinner has had his number. It is the kind of dominance that makes you question everything.
Sinner’s Unbreakable Serve
Let’s talk about the match itself. De Minaur came out with some fire, earning three break points in Sinner’s very first service game. For a fleeting moment, it looked like we might have a real dogfight on our hands. The crowd held its breath. Could this be the day?
Nope.
Sinner slammed the door shut, held serve, and that was pretty much De Minaur’s last real sniff of a chance. The first set was a tense affair, with both players holding serve until the pressure cooker hit its limit at 5-5. That’s when Sinner, cool as the other side of the pillow, finally broke through on his eighth break point. He ripped a backhand down the line that was so clean, you could hear the hearts of Aussie fans breaking all the way from Melbourne.
The Inevitable Collapse
After Sinner pocketed the first set, the air went out of the stadium, and seemingly, out of De Minaur. The second set was a formality. Sinner broke him twice in quick succession, racing to a 4-0 lead. It was a masterclass in clean, powerful ball-striking. De Minaur, to his credit, managed to get on the board to avoid the bagel, but the writing was on the wall in big, bold, Italian-colored letters.
Sinner has now won 30 consecutive indoor matches. He hasn’t even dropped a service game in this entire tournament. That’s just absurd. He joins Novak Djokovic as the only other player to accomplish that feat since they started keeping track of these things back in ’91. He’s a machine, a red-headed terminator sent to destroy baseline rallies.
So, Sinner marches on to the final, looking to defend his title. He’ll face either Carlos Alcaraz or Felix Auger-Aliassime, but at this rate, does it even matter? When he’s playing like this, in front of his home crowd, he seems less like a tennis player and more like an inevitability.
