Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner compete against each other in their own tennis star system

What makes a tennis rivalry?

Ideally, the players are of the same level, but have different personalities and styles. There is a degree of unpredictability in the results of their matches, and those matches propel them to greatness while raising the profile of the sport as a whole.

A great new rivalry is emerging in men's tennis that meets these demands. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz have met 10 times now, most recently on Wednesday in an instant classic in Beijing, and they are building something that resembles their tennis forebears.

In the final part of their battle for supremacy, Alcaraz won a thrilling China Open final 6-7(6), 6-4, 7-6(3) in three hours and 20 minutes. The tennis wasn't just exceptional; it was played in the rarefied atmosphere that no one else on the tour can currently experience.

The match also epitomized the contrast in style and personality that the best rivalries have. Alcaraz is more emotionally expressive and plays high-risk, high-reward tennis compared to Sinner's more serene, violent efficiency. When Alcaraz detonates a forehand, he moves behind it; the only sound from Sinner is the cracking of the racket on the ball. Alcaraz, 21, is shorter but has unparalleled explosiveness; Sinner, 23, has long limbs and a thin frame.

Both are so fast they look like they could be Olympic sprinters, and where Alcaraz lunges and bends like his limbs are putty, Sinner dives and spins like a superhero escaping a burning building.

Pushing each other to the limit @carlosalcaraz @janniksin #ChinaOpen pic.twitter.com/nxDkbwzH5b

Tennis TV (@TennisTV) October 2, 2024

As things stand, these two are by far the best male tennis players in the world. They shared the four Grand Slams of 2024 and are again the number 1 and number 2 players as of this week.

Their own head-to-head score is 6-4 in favor of Alcaraz. He has won the last three meetings, but only after losing the first set each time, and only three of their ten matches have been won in straight sets by both players. The last three have all been decisive and all took place in 2024 in Beijing, at the French Open and in Indian Wells. Alcaraz's three wins in those matches account for half of Sinner's six defeats this year, and the Italian was on a 16-match winning streak before Alcaraz's defeat was snapped.

With data from ten matches, comparisons with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic or the battle between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi are premature at this point, but trends are visible. All signs point to a rivalry that will continue at the top of the sport and perhaps transcend it, now and long after Sinner and Alcaraz are gone.

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How Federer, Nadal and Djokovic reshaped tennis

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In contrast to the first ten meetings between Nadal and Federer, Nadal and Djokovic and Federer and Djokovic, this seems to be a balanced start.

All three of these rivalries started with Nadal, Nadal and Federer leading 7-3 respectively. The rivalry between Nadal and Federer was initially defined by a match-up problem, especially on clay, where the heavy topspin on the former's forehand would wreak havoc on the latter's single-handed backhand. With Djokovic, Nadal and Federer were both too crafty and tough in the big matches when Djokovic first arrived on the tour and that initially gave them a big advantage.

In the case of Sinner and Alcaraz, despite the latter being two years younger, they have not been able to gain a big lead over the other within matches. Alcaraz's three consecutive victories were very different: he came back from destruction in the first set in Indian Wells by lifting his groundstrokes and breaking Sinner's metronomic base game in the process. He then waged a battle of mutually enforced discomfort in the engrossing, scratchy French Open semi-final, and in Beijing he was the dominant player for much of the match without converting, before taking the title when the opportunity was greatest was that he would lose it.

One of the most fun elements of their rivalry so far was also on full display in Beijing: the way they push each other to greater heights. This was also a staple of the Big Three, and from Agassi and Sampras before them, the 1999 Wimbledon final and 2001 US Open quarter-finals between the latter led to perhaps the two best performances of Sampras' career.

This has happened a few times with Sinner and Alcaraz, first in the 2022 US Open quarterfinal, which then introduced an embryonic rivalry to a much wider audience. Alcaraz won the match in five sets, but the story was the computer game tennis the pair produced, constantly pressuring each other to hit even more outrageous shots. Their 2023 meeting in Miami was similar, and so was Wednesday, with a point in the final set tiebreaker helping to change Alcaraz's ways and show off all their combined athleticism and court skills.

Both seem to enjoy this aspect of playing each other, as if two child geniuses are finally placed in an environment suitable for their otherworldly talents. By playing with each other and taking their game to an even higher level, they also move further away from the rest of the field, perhaps with the exception of Novak Djokovic when he is fully fit.

This dynamic will be familiar to fans of the Big Three era tennis writer Matthew Willis carefully conceived an ouroboros. Each meeting between them, and the various stylistic and psychological battles within them, took Federer, Nadal and Djokovic to a level that all others could not reach. They also played against each other so often, especially in the latter stages of the Grand Slam tournaments, that they blocked the essential experience of losing a final or semi-final, let alone winning one.

As for their relationship, if you want a rivalry, Sinner-Alcaraz might not be for you. These two get along well and have practiced together. After his victory on Wednesday, Alcaraz said about Sinner: I respect you enormously as a player, but even more as a person.

At the French Open in June, both players were much more serious in the tunnel than they had been at Indian Wells a few months earlier, when before their semi-final they looked like two friends hanging out at a cocktail party.

The exhibition feeling of their matches, in which it sometimes seems as if they are conspiring to achieve the most spectacular points, is in reality a disguise. It's not that they want to be hyper-aggressive and attack as early as possible, as much as necessary, because if they aren't, the other one will be. If they settle into long rallies, there is the lurking promise that things will turn absurd sooner or later.

On Wednesday there were countless points like this, which left the crowd gasping and reminded of the exchanges between Nadal and Djokovic or Djokovic and Andy Murray when they faced each other (as in the 2012 US Open final, which lasted almost five hours, with the long rallies getting better as they got longer). It can also seem like the scoreboard is magnetically pulled toward a tight end, with neither player able to run from the other. This happened on Wednesday during the tiebreak in the final set and also in New York two years ago.

There is a cloud in this tennis sky. An independent hearing convened by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) had found Sinner was not at fault or negligent after two positive tests for the banned substance clostebol in March, but the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced on Saturday that it would appeal this ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It is seeking a one- or two-year ban for the world No. 1, which would curtail this rivalry and fundamentally reshape men's tennis.

That aspect of Sinner's career remains shrouded in uncertainty. What is not in any doubt is the excitement tennis is feeling about its developing rivalry with Alcaraz. Ten meetings later, things promise to keep getting better.

(Top photo: Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)