![\"Terence](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/atmane-sinner-pokemon-cincinnati-2025-(1).jpg\")
<\/p>\n Cincinnati
\n Atmane surprises birthday boy Sinner with Pokemon gift ahead of SF in Cincinnati <\/p>\n
World No. 136 gave Sinner a card from his collection in the tunnel<\/p>\n
August 16, 2025<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
ATP Media<\/p>\n
Terence Atmane gives Jannik Sinner a birthday gift ahead of their semi-final clash in Cincinnati.
\n By ATP Staff<\/p>\n
Terence Atmane<\/a> brought a lighthearted touch to an otherwise high-stakes occasion before his semi-final clash with World No. 1 Jannik Sinner<\/a> on Saturday at the Cincinnati Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n The No. 136 player in the PIF ATP Rankings, Atmane is an avid fan of the Japanese trading card game Pok\u00e9mon. While waiting in the tunnel ahead of their Centre Court showdown, the Frenchman surprised Sinner \u2014 who is celebrating his 24th birthday today \u2014 by gifting him a card from his collection.<\/p>\n \u201cI was talking to him a little bit in the locker room. He has one of the biggest collections of Pokemon cards, and I\u2019m very lucky that I got one of his ones,\u201d Sinner told Tennis Channel. \u201cIt was just a nice moment before a match, we didn\u2019t know each other at all. So, it was a nice moment.\u201d<\/p>\n The gesture drew smiles from both players, who shared an embrace before walking out to court in their first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a kind of Pikachu\u2026 It said 30 damage to itself, so I don\u2019t know if that is good or not,\u201d Sinner said of the card with a laugh.<\/p>\n With his run to the semi-final, which includes consecutive Top-10 wins over Taylor Fritz<\/a> and Holger Rune<\/a>, Atmane is up 67 spots to a career-high No. 69 in the PIF ATP Live Rankings. Meanwhile, defending champion Sinner is riding a 25-match winning streak on hard courts, further underscoring the scale of Atmane\u2019s challenge.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cincinnati Atmane surprises birthday boy Sinner with Pokemon gift ahead of SF in Cincinnati World No. 136 gave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-88535","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\/88535","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=88535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}