Sinner withdrew from the Canadian Open<\/a> and will now play his first match of the North American hard-court swing at the Cincinnati Open<\/a>. <\/p>\n He won his third ATP<\/a> Masters 1000 crown at the event last season, after defeating Frances Tiafoe<\/a> in the final. <\/p>\n Ahead of his first match, Sinner<\/a> claims there is a \u2018very strange\u2019 difference in the conditions this year.<\/p>\n In an interview with Tennis TV<\/a>, the Italian explained: \u201cFrom my point of view, the tennis balls are getting smaller. The more you play, the smaller they get.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is very strange because usually they open up and get slower, but here they get actually faster.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ball bounces much higher. We haven\u2019t had one very windy day yet, but it\u2019s going to be very difficult if there\u2019s going to be wind here.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw it last year, remember the match against Andrey was super difficult, so it\u2019s very difficult and it\u2019s going to be a mental game. I am trying [to] accept every situation on the court and trying to be ready.<\/p>\n Sinner dominated during the hard-court season last year, clinching a Masters title in Cincinnati and a major title in New York.<\/p>\n He kicked off his campaign at the 2024 Cincinnati Open with a straight-sets victory over home hope Alex Michelsen, before advancing again after Jordan Thompson withdrew from their second-round match. <\/p>\n RoundOpponentFinalFrances Tiafoe (W)SemifinalAlexander Zverev (W)QuarterfinalAndrey Rublev (W)Round of 16Jordan Thompson (W) (Walkover)Round of 32Alex Michelsen (W)Jannik Sinner\u2019s 2024 Cincinnati Open campaign <\/p>\n In the quarterfinal, he defeated his Canadian Open conqueror Andrey Rublev<\/a> to book his place in the final four, where he faced Alexander Zverev<\/a>. <\/p>\n Zverev had a four-match winning streak against Sinner, which the eventual champion finally snapped, beating the German over three sets.<\/p>\n Against Tiafoe in the final, he clinched the first-set tiebreak 7-4, and took the second set 6-2 to hoist the trophy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jannik Sinner is set to begin his title defence in Cincinnati with an opening clash against Daniel Elahi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[430,37370,432,99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-69514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp","9":"tag-cincinnati-open","10":"tag-jannik-sinner","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69514","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=69514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Frances](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2167839830-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Matthew Stockman\/Getty ImagesJannik Sinner notices \u2018strange\u2019 difference in Cincinnati balls<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2167205012-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Dylan Buell\/Getty ImagesJannik Sinner\u2019s successful Cincinnati Open campaign in 2024<\/p>\n