Jannik Sinner arrives at the Italian Open as the world No 1, and the man who has pushed him hardest is not in the draw. Carlos Alcaraz withdrew with a wrist injury before the French Open, leaving Sinner to start his home tournament without the rival who has sat alongside him at the top of the men’s game for years.
That matters because the sport’s top two players have spent years trading the world No 1 and No 2 positions, and Alcaraz is the one man standing between Sinner and the only grand slam he has not yet won. Sinner, who won the Monte-Carlo Masters, put it plainly: tennis needs Carlos.
The numbers behind the rivalry show why. Elite players live out of suitcases and spend 11 months of the year moving from one event to the next, and in that grind Sinner and Alcaraz have emerged as a rare pairing that feels less poisonous than the old guard of tennis combatants. In previous eras, the great players would yell and scream and carry on during matches. These two have given the sport a different rhythm.
Their odd friendship has produced scenes that would have looked impossible in an earlier generation. At the Monte-Carlo Masters, after Sinner won, Alcaraz walked back to his room, then turned up to watch Sinner briefly chicken out before diving off a high diving board and filming it. At the Australian Open this year, Alcaraz’s opponent used two controversial underarm serves in a row. In the same tournament, Sinner suffered through the infamous heatstroke incident. The rivalry has had its share of awkward moments, but not the kind of venom that once defined tennis’s biggest stages.
For the Italian Open, that leaves Sinner carrying the spotlight alone for now. He is the top seed, the home favorite and the world No 1, with the French Open still ahead and the game’s most important absence still on the treatment table. If Alcaraz cannot recover in time, the path to Paris changes for everyone — but especially for the player whose biggest obstacle has been the one other man who can match him shot for shot.
