Carlos Alcaraz Secures His Spot in the French Open Final

The Carlitos comeback is on! After a wobbly start, Carlos Alcaraz—not too far removed from a series of small injuries—will play for the men’s championship of the French Open on Sunday, after stealing a match from Jannik Sinner in a five-set war of attrition—2-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3—in the first semifinal.

“You have to find the joy in suffering,” Alcaraz said after the match—referring, perhaps, not only to his recent injuries, but also his utterly lackluster play early on in the match. (Both Sinner and Alcaraz marched into Roland Garros on the mend, Sinner from a hip issue and Alcaraz wearing a compression sleeve on his forearm due to a recent muscular edema.)

We came to this match expecting a classic: Jannik Sinner—the tournament’s second seed, but the world’s new number one player after Novak Djokovic withdrew from the tournament with a knee injury a few days ago—facing off against third-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, who plays tennis like a prizefighter and, aside from his own recent injuries, has been nearly unbeatable. Many tennis-watchers have pointed to the rivalry of these players—they had played each other eight times before this match, with four wins each—as a potentially historic one. “The toughest matches I’ve played in my whole career have been against Jannik,” Alcaraz said on Friday, and he wasn’t lying—even when Alcaraz has looked unstoppable against everybody else, Sinner’s always seemed to be the one player capable of outsmarting him and out-hitting him on any given day.

Jannik Sinner, lunging for a return during Friday’s match.

With Sinner 22 and Alcaraz just 21, this was the youngest Grand Slam semifinal since Andy Murray, then 21, beat Rafael Nadal, then 22, at the US Open in 2008. With Djokovic’s withdrawal, it also marked the first semifinal in 20 years without one of the Big Three (Federer, Nadal, Djokovic).

If fans were expecting an epic, what they got in the first set was more a tutorial from Sinner, who looked indomitable, breaking Alcaraz’s serve again and again to quickly take the set 6-1. Somehow, Alcaraz managed to flip the script in the second, taking it seemingly just as easily, 6-3.

That’s when things got interesting: In the third set, Sinner appeared to wilt a bit, cramping in his hand and arm. He was treated during a changeover by the physio, but then…improbably rolled off a string of games to take the third set 6-3, capitalizing on a weak return of serve and too many unforced errors from Alcaraz. If this match was to be a classic, it would be a slow-burning one. “It was…a little weird, the third set,” Alcaraz said later. “In this moment you have to keep going; you have to stay there fighting.”

And fight he did: The fourth set saw these two masterful players operating at something like the level we expect from them—Alcaraz with his lethal speed and unholy groundstrokes, Sinner with his own killer serves and octopus-like reach and agility—though it was Alcaraz who took the set, 6-4, before getting an early 3-0 lead in the deciding fifth set. And while Sinner capitalized on a few tactical mistakes from Alcaraz to prevent that final set from being a rout, in the end Alcaraz pulled a rabbit out of his hat, essentially stealing this match (and making the theft look rather easy) 6-3 in the fifth.

If it wasn’t a true classic, it was a textbook exercise in never giving up, playing to your strengths, and taking advantage of one’s opponent’s mistakes. With his win today, Alcaraz becomes the youngest player to have reached Grand Slam finals on all court surfaces. (Nadal and Agassi were 22 when they did the same, Federer and Djokovic both 24.)

Alcaraz will play the winner of today’s second men’s semifinal, which pits Alexander Zverev against Caspar Ruud, in Sunday’s final. Stay tuned.