{"id":412309,"date":"2026-01-14T12:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T12:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412309\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T12:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T12:40:14","slug":"pat-cash-is-worried-about-the-dominance-of-italys-jannik-sinner-and-spains-carlos-alcaraz-in-mens-tennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412309\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Cash is worried about the dominance of Italy&#8217;s Jannik Sinner and Spain&#8217;s Carlos Alcaraz in men&#8217;s tennis."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australian tennis great Pat Cash believes men&#8217;s tennis is at an awkward spot, thanks to the dominance of Italy&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nine.com.au\/person\/jannik-sinner-6fq1\" class=\"sc-bczRLG cEmsbU\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jannik Sinner<\/a> and Spain&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nine.com.au\/person\/carlos-alcaraz-25ds\" class=\"sc-bczRLG cEmsbU\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The pair will enter this year&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nine.com.au\/sport\/tennis\/australian-open\" class=\"sc-bczRLG cEmsbU\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Australian Open<\/a> as the top two seeds, and have won the last eight grand slams between them.<\/p>\n<p>Given their complete dominance, Cash worries about interest in the tournament, should one drop out early. <\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nine.com.au\/sport\/cricket\/news-2026-ashes-stuart-broad-drinking-culture-england-day-night-test-mcg-joe-root-ben-duckett-20260114-p5ntx3.html\" class=\"sc-bczRLG cEmsbU\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Broad hits out at England drinking allegations<\/a><\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nine.com.au\/sport\/tennis\/news-2026-thanasi-kokkinakis-withdraws-adelaide-international-injury-australian-open-20260114-p5ntzl.html\" class=\"sc-bczRLG cEmsbU\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Busted Kokkinakis withdraws hours before match<\/a><\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nine.com.au\/sport\/tennis\/australian-open-2026-1-point-slam-rules-players-draw-prize-money-how-to-watch-everything-to-know-20260114-p5nu0q.html\" class=\"sc-bczRLG cEmsbU\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gauff goes undercover as $1m prize lures public to 1 Point Slam<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This happened at last year&#8217;s Australian Open, with Novak Djokovic knocking out Alcaraz.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/59cb72805c0450d0e86f0b6d03a65501550fc813.jpeg\"  width=\"100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"_0b53bae146db0b62 _7475dd3391ee1518\" style=\"--text-color:var(--color-text-secondary)\">Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n<p>Sinner went on to take out the tournament in an anticlimactic win over Alexander Zverev.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think anyone can match it with those two, Alcaraz and Sinner, let&#8217;s put them aside,&#8221; Cash told 3AW when asked if Aussie Alex de Minaur could beat them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve almost perfected the baseline game. How to beat that? I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is the problem with the men&#8217;s tour at the moment. It&#8217;s a little unhealthy to have a two-horse race. If the two horses aren&#8217;t in the final, is there going to be interest?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We saw that last year with Sinner and Zverev in the final. It was a one-sided final and people went &#8216;ugh&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want that French Open final. That five hour epic. We can&#8217;t expect that all the time.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the Adelaide International and Australian Open qualifying live and free on <a href=\"https:\/\/stream.9now.com.au\/NjedMmjYQZb\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-bczRLG cEmsbU\">9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, if one of them has a bad day and goes out, will somebody else step up and really challenge the other one.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d have to say probably not. That aside, there are a whole bunch of players who can start getting to a semi final and there&#8217;s a really good crop of young players coming.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But they&#8217;re still maybe three years away. For the next three years, I think it is going to be predominantly those two guys.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Jack Draper from the U.K, I thought he was the man, but he&#8217;s had more injuries. He&#8217;s got the power and the game.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Cash reiterated his thought that de Minaur, who enters the tournament as the No.6 seed, simply can&#8217;t match the power of the top two.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Alex de Minaur of Australia looks on in the Quarter-Final Men's Match against Hubert Hurkacz of Poland during the United Cup at Ken Rosewall Arena on January 09, 2026 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne\/Getty Images)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768394413_273_5c91dbbe29b9850adaa98d1a8b395a3c7a5d93cd.jpeg\"  width=\"100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"_0b53bae146db0b62 _7475dd3391ee1518\" style=\"--text-color:var(--color-text-secondary)\">Alex de Minaur of Australia.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re looking at who can bring excitement to the tour and Alex de Minaur is one of those guys. He&#8217;s just not the biggest, strongest guy and he&#8217;s going to struggle with some of those big hitters, but he&#8217;s right up there. It&#8217;s fantastic effort to be ranked sixth in the world,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And there are some others. Djokovic will win some matches, Zverev, others. Alex is in that discussion. Will he get to one or two in the world, no, but he&#8217;s in that semi final discussion, definitely.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Australian Open main draw gets underway on Sunday in Melbourne. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian tennis great Pat Cash believes men&#8217;s tennis is at an awkward spot, thanks to the dominance of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-412309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}