Jannik Sinner v Alexander Zverev: Wimbledon men’s singles final – live
Key events
That French Open situation had an effect on Sinner, I think. Before it, he looked – and, I bet, felt – impregnable. He arrived at Roland-Garros having won 29 matches in a row, but his body packing up on him will have given him some doubts and the rest of the tour some hope. It doesn’t mean there are weaknesses in his game, but it has affected his fluency and aura.
So what of our match? Zverev has played really well in his last two matches, the best I’ve ever seen him play on grass, and his on-court confidence is higher than ever before. His serve and backhand are always sensational, but his forehand is much improved, likewise his volleying; if he maintains he level, he’s got a chance.
Sinner, though, is just the better player – by a way – and, after a forcing his way to early wins, including coming from 2-1 down in round one, he turned it on in the semi, wiping Djokovic off the court. He has no weaknesses, so beating him is a problem: Zverev will have to serve lights out, hope the match goes long, and Sinner’s body lets him down. Otherwise, the consistency of the Italian’s hitting makes him an overwhelming favourite.
Mazal tov dept: regular readers will be familiar with Coach Calv Betton, our resident expert. Well, yesterday, Calv’s charge Henry Patten won his second men’s doubles title with his partner Harri Heliovvara. I can assure you it couldn’t happen to three nicer lads.
Also going on:
Preamble
Can we ever heal our deepest wounds? For many of us, that’s a question we barely acknowledge, the pain of childhood and thereafter buried because we have neither time nor confidence nor inclination to engage. Instead, it gnaws at our convictions, integrity and identity, stopping us from connecting to those closest to us and also to ourselves.
Sport, though, is not like that: rather, those wounds are dangled in faces, often in public, becoming the subject of debate, conjecture and gags. It’s fair to say, say, that Jimmy White has an inkling he never became world snooker champion, just as Chris Waddle well recalls chriswaddling his penalty an acre or so over the bar when England lost to Germany in the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup.
There is, though, an upside to this nose-rubbing, at least while a career remains in progress: the opportunity to resolve the situation with the accordant glory compounded by the preceding failure. So, though interviewers tend not to remind us of that time we pulled down our pants as well as our trousers when changing for our first-ever PE lesson, or called our teacher Mum, or a teacher stomped our harmonica to pieces with her high heels in front of the class, or our parents told our friends we were showing off because we were overtired, or we lit the filter of a cigarette while chatting up a girl, or our friends dressed up in our parents’ clothes, or our parents wrote to our friends asking them to stop distracting us from our A-level revision, or we were told, emphatically, by people charged with our safety, that we were defective and shameful in various ways and so on and so on, we’re stuck with those things. We can process and absorb, but can never eradicate or forget.
In the 2025 Australian Open final, Jannik Sinner destroyed Alexander Zverev. It wasn’t Zverev’s first such defeat – in 2020, he lost the US Open final to Dominic Thiem from two sets up and, in 2024, was pipped in a five-set French Open final by Carlos Alcaraz. But that match in Melbourne was the first time he’d been outclassed – and, for extra agony, by a younger man who was still improving, with two of the previous three majors claied by an even younger one still. “I’m just not good enough” was Zverev’s summation of events, his desolation palpable.
But the thing about sport is that it offers constant scope for professional redemption and, though things seemed hopeless at the time, Zverev was soon offered a shot at it. Before this year’s Roland-Garros, he knew Alcaraz would be absent injured so, when Sinner’s body gave out early in the competition, he was presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. And, though he made hard work of it, he got it done, just about, the accolade he feared he’d never achieve his forever.
Yet he still knows the truth: in order to get what he wanted, he needed circumstances to conspire in his favour. There’s no asterisk in the record books, but you can be sure there’s one in his mind, just as there is in ours: we could all win a big pot if all the players better than us weren’t involved.
Today’s match offers Zverev an opportunity to change his reality: should he beat Sinner in a Wimbledon final, his status as a tennis player is guaranteed, his wounds salved, healed and expunged with his losses part of a hero narrative in which he overcomes fears, setbacks and tribulations before achieving his destiny.
Easier said than done. Though Sinner was, by his standards, poor at the start of the fortnight, he was magnificent in destroying Novak Djokovic on Friday and knows he has the calmness his opponent lacks – so too the reliable forehand and net-game. And he is in pursuit of his own legacy, hoping to snaffle slams in the absence of a greatest rival who currently has seven to his four. Just as this is a big opportunity for Zverev, so is it for him – but after what happened in Paris, he’ll be experiencing doubts that have never assailed him before.
Or, in other words, both men will be feeling a way when they step out on to Centre Court this afternoon – and, because we understand what it means to wrestle, sabotage and distrust ourselves, so too will we.
Play: 4pm BST
