Jannik Sinner’s Quest to Achieve Rare Tennis Feat in 2024

Casually, this is an unusual feat that Jannik Sinner can accomplish this year. By winning the Australian Open, the young Italian has already had a successful season and changed the course of his career by entering the Grand Slam winners’ circle. Can he double the stakes from 2024 to complete the year with at least two titles in the four main tournaments on the circuit? He obviously has the means and, after all, he was not that far away at Roland Garros, where he reached the semi-finals.

In any case, it would be an unprecedented performance for… 47 years. The last time a player opened his Grand Slam record and won his second major title in the same year was in 1977, when Guillermo Vilas won at Roland Garros and then the US Open. The Argentinian would later pocket the Australian Open twice, in 1978 and 1979.

Vilas was only the second player in the Open era to achieve such a feat, after Jimmy Connors in 1974. The American left-hander had won in Australia, his very first title, before two victories in quick succession at Wimbledon and the US Open for a Little Slam that could have turned into a big one had he shown up at Roland-Garros. At least he could have had a glimpse of it, even if the Parisian clay has not really smiled on him during his career.

A closed circle

These are therefore the only two players to have combined their first and second major crownings in the same season. For 47 years, all beginners have had to wait at least for the next exercise. Including the three monsters that are Roger Federer (Wimbledon 2003 for his first, Australia 2004 for the second), Rafael Nadal (Roland-Garros 2005, Roland-Garros 2006) and Novak Djokovic (Australian Open 2008, Australian Open 2011).

Obviously, this statistic has its limits. By definition, it is impossible to follow up immediately after opening your record at the US Open. Carlos Alcaraz could not therefore do like Connors or Vilas. But the Spaniard took less than a year to win his second major title, at Wimbledon, last year. He is only the fourth person in the 21st century to succeed in doing so in a time frame corresponding to the period of a Grand Slam, including over two seasons, or four tournaments.

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The other three? Andy Murray, with his victories at the US Open in 2012 and then at Wimbledon in 2013, exactly the same sequence as Alcaraz, exactly ten years before, Lleyton Hewitt, also between New York (2001) and London (2002) and, between the two, a certain Roger Federer, who had only waited six months between his inaugural Wimbledon title (2003) and his second major victory, in Melbourne, at the beginning of 2004. This is therefore rather rare. But over a single season, it is exceptional. Because it requires winning one of the first three tournaments and not starting with the last one like Alcaraz, but also because, physically and even more mentally, the wear and tear of a season is incomparable with what one can feel over a rolling year.

Jannik Sinner’s performance would therefore be quite remarkable. Especially since digesting a first major victory is not always easy. This is the reason why, for multiple major winners, title number 2 often comes a good distance from number 1. Particularly among young people. Champions as illustrious as Pete Sampras or Novak Djokovic are proof of this. Sinner probably has the maturity, and undoubtedly the talent, to quickly double the lead. From 2024, in New York or from Wimbledon?

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2024-06-29 08:09:00
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