Shockwaves in Paris as Sinner crashes out

At the French Open, No.1 seed Jannik Sinner simply couldn’t cope with the scorching heat on the Roland Garros centre court. The centre court in Rome is known as the “flaming cauldron” – but this match in Paris certainly gave it a run for its money.

At 6-3 6-2 5-1 against the Argentinian, Francisco Cerundolo, the Italian player seemed to be running away with the match. But then he started to limp and shake out his quads. By the fourth set he could barely move, let alone run. It wasn’t helped by his opponent, whose playing style is well-suited to the clay, with his heavy, high topspin ground strokes which reared up at Sinner’s shoulder height.  Countering that is exhausting for the opponent and reminiscent of Rafa Nadal’s playing style on the Paris clay, where he won a record 14 titles.

As Cerundolo clawed his way back to  5-4 in that third set, Sinner asked for a medical time out, telling the doctor and physio he was feeling dizzy and wanted to vomit, and left the court for treatment. The rules on medical time outs are a little hazy. The ATP rules distinguish between treatable injury and “loss of condition” (cramp, fatigue), but enforcement is notoriously inconsistent. Daniil Medvedev, understandably, complained to the umpire about an almost identical situation in the Italian Open semis last week where Sinner received treatment on both quads – one quad could be seen as injury, two quads can only be cramp.

I remember some years ago watching a match at Wimbledon where one of the players cramped up and writhed in agony and no-one came to his aid. The umpire just looked on and it seemed brutal.  It’s surely time to change the rules on this.

But back to the loss of Sinner to Roland Garros. With Carlos Alcaraz out with injury, it was generally assumed that Sinner would be unbeatable. This puts a completely different complexion on the tournament. The odds now are that the French Open winner will be either Novak Djokovic or Sascha Zverev, which would set a record for either player. Zverev has never won a Slam title, famously bottling out in two finals at Paris and New York. And Djokovic is chasing that elusive 25^th Slam title. I earlier wrote that the Serb should perhaps sit out the gruelling Roland Garros clay and rest for the upcoming grass season to give himself a chance to win Wimbledon on his favourite surface. Perhaps I was wrong on that. Djokovic may well be licking his lips, relishing this unexpected opportunity to break the record at Paris instead.

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