Two-time champion Alcaraz’s absence with a wrist injury has deprived Roland Garros of one of the sport’s biggest stars.<\/p>\n
It also means his absorbing rivalry with Sinner – which led to such a thrilling final in Paris last year – has been put on hold, with the pair having won the past nine Grand Slam titles between them. <\/p>\n
Sinner, who has lifted the Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome clay-court titles as part of a 29-match winning streak, is now the overwhelming favourite to win what would be a maiden French Open title.<\/p>\n
At this stage it is difficult to see anybody stopping him.<\/p>\n
Djokovic is the only man other than Alcaraz who has beaten Sinner at the majors since Wimbledon in 2024.<\/p>\n
But the 24-time major champion has barely played he beat Sinner in the Australian Open semi-finals before losing to Alcaraz.<\/p>\n
Djokovic sticks to a sparse schedule these days, believing it gives him the best shot at finally moving clear of Margaret Court in terms of all-time major wins.<\/p>\n
Playing a huge server like Mpetshi Perricard is not ideal for his hopes of finding rhythm, although Djokovic still has more than enough quality to beat a player who has won seven of his 10 tour-level matches on clay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two-time champion Alcaraz’s absence with a wrist injury has deprived Roland Garros of one of the sport’s biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-685527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685527","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=685527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}