{"id":136882,"date":"2025-09-06T10:52:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T10:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136882\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T10:52:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T10:52:03","slug":"jannik-sinner-reaches-u-s-open-final-against-carlos-alcaraz-with-win-over-felix-auger-aliassime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136882\/","title":{"rendered":"Jannik Sinner reaches U.S. Open final against Carlos Alcaraz with win over F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime"},"content":{"rendered":"

FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. \u2014 After 126 matches, the U.S. Open<\/a> men\u2019s singles will finish with the one that the tournament has been waiting for.<\/p>\n

For the third time in a row at a Grand Slam, Jannik Sinner<\/a> and Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> will contest the final, marking the first time in tennis\u2019 Open Era that two players have played three consecutive major finals against each other in the same year.<\/p>\n

Sinner and Alcaraz have dropped two sets between them all tournament. Sinner has been broken four times, Alcaraz twice. They could both lose more sets against one another Sunday than they have done in their other six matches combined. These are remarkable numbers, which bear witness to what becomes obvious with every passing tournament: The rest of the field combined can\u2019t get close to what Sinner and Alcaraz can do to each other as individuals.<\/p>\n

Except perhaps the version of F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime<\/a> that took to Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday night. Sinner beat the Canadian 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, but the victory was anything but routine. Auger-Aliassime played some of his best tennis since the early 2020s in the second and fourth sets, winning the former and having Sinner on the edge of going a break down for 3-1 in the latter, before the Italian escaped. Sinner had left the court for a medical timeout after losing the second set, and was sweating heavily from the first set onward on a pleasant 77-degree evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nothing to worry about,\u201d Sinner said in his news conference, explaining that he felt \u201ca small twitching\u201d in his stomach after hitting a serve toward the end of the fourth set.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the treatment, it was feeling much, much better. At some point I didn\u2019t feel anything anymore. I was serving back to normal pace, so it was all good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As for most of the tournament, Sinner\u2019s first-serve percentage hovered around 50, and Auger-Aliassime took the initiative with flashing forehands and the bravery to go after his shots in baseline rallies. Sinner eventually came through in a display of fight and quality in adversity, and now has a day\u2019s rest to manage the problem. He\u2019s convinced it will have no effect on Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz was briefly in a battle against Novak Djokovic<\/a>, but eased through the third set after taking the second on a tiebreak. It was the first time Alcaraz had beaten Djokovic on a hard court in four attempts, overcoming the one player, other than Sinner, who can truly trouble him. Alcaraz is averaging fewer than 10 games dropped per match, and his 6-4, 7-6(4), 6-2 victory was his second-closest encounter so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just too good, playing on a really high level,\u201d Djokovic said after losing to Alcaraz, which followed defeats to Sinner at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. Between them, Sinner and Alcaraz have dispatched their only serious rival in three straight majors, largely making every other match at these tournaments feel almost immaterial.<\/p>\n

A win for Alcaraz would take him to six majors to Sinner\u2019s four, and level up this year at two apiece. A Sinner victory would level Alcaraz\u2019s total of five majors, leaving him holding three of the four biggest titles in tennis in 2025 and four of the last five. Alcaraz has won six of the last seven meetings; whoever wins Sunday will take the world No. 1 ranking.<\/p>\n

When it was put to Sinner that Roger Federer used to say he wished he could stop facing Rafael Nadal in Grand Slam finals, Sinner smiled and said \u201cWell, I mean, yes and no,\u201d in relation to whether he was happy continually facing his great rival.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the tournament, Sinner said that their meetings now will never be quite as spontaneous as the epic five-setter here three years ago, which announced their rivalry to the world. They know each other\u2019s game too well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always take things about the previous matches,\u201d Alcaraz said in a news conference after beating Djokovic. \u201cI\u2019m going to take note, and I will see what I did wrong, what I did great in the matches, just to approach the final in a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rafael Nadal<\/a>, the 22-time Grand Slam champion, said in an interview that even in June\u2019s much-vaunted French Open final, there were things they could have done better. He said that Alcaraz \u201cwas a little bit wrong tactically\u201d in the first few sets, while he felt that Sinner could have been more aggressive when up championship points.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz\u2019s main vulnerability, his serve, has been close to flawless this tournament, but he served well at the French Open too ahead of meeting Sinner. He lost his serve seven times in the Roland Garros final, having only been broken 10 times in the rest of the tournament. Knowing he doesn\u2019t have to be perfect from the ground has enabled him to play with calm and controlled aggression, easing through his matches. Sinner spoke Friday about how much Alcaraz\u2019s serve has improved.<\/p>\n

It is the Italian\u2019s serve has been the weaker through this fortnight, and Denis Shapovalov, like Auger-Aliassime, took advantage, putting Sinner on the ropes in the third round before falling away after holding a point to go up 4-0 in the third set.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz pointed to his rival\u2019s improved physicality and the fact that \u201che\u2019s able to play at his 100 per cent during two, three, four hours\u201d when asked about his evolution Friday, while the Spaniard has regulated his in-match volatility. Sinner\u2019s five-set record is still not great at 6-10, but very few of those have been played in the past couple of years because he is so rarely taken to five sets. He has yet to win a match longer than three hours and 50 minutes, but the level he played in that near-five-and-a-half-hour French Open final against Alcaraz showed that he can last the course. Sinner said Friday that nowadays his \u201cphysical shape is better. Back in the day I was maybe struggling a little bit if we go three, four sets. Now I feel fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

If things do go long, Alcaraz will still back himself. His extraordinary 14-1 record in five-set matches is one of his superpowers and fuels his self-belief when things get tight. Three of those five-set wins are against Sinner. Alcaraz also has the greater variety of the two players, an area of Sinner\u2019s game that Nadal expects the Italian to work on in the next few years. \u201cHe can keep improving a little bit the hands, the slice, the volleys,\u201d Nadal said. In his news conference, Sinner said that he was actively working on being more authoritative at the net.<\/p>\n

Playing each other yet again will also serve to improve both players, just as it did with Nadal and his rivals, Roger Federer and Djokovic. So while there are no secrets between Alcaraz and Sinner anymore, no one quite knows what to expect.<\/p>\n

(Photo: Clive Brunskill \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. \u2014 After 126 matches, the U.S. Open men\u2019s singles will finish with the one that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-136882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}