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Key events
*Sinner (7)6-7 1-1 Zverev At 15-all, Zverev again takes the initiative, a backhand down the line eliciting the error, but a second serve and volley is good enough for 30-all. An ace out wide then raises game point, but a flat forehand cross takes us to deuce and again, it’s Zverev unleashing the more destructive weapons; Sinner isn’t hitting as confidently. He does, though, close out in short order but, as this set develops, if he can’t break the pressure on him will only increase, in the knowledge he can’t afford to go down two sets against so destructive a server.
Sinner (7)6-7 0-1 Zverev* Will Sinner consider a rethink? We know Zverev is committed to attack because he has, whereas the champ has been a little more passive, waiting rather than unloading. But a fantastic cross-court pass gives him 15-all … then a drop makes 30-all following an ace down the T, before a forehand slice waved into the net brings us to deuce. I’d expect Sinner to attack here … if he can … and he sort of can, a service winner followed by a backhand winner, inside out to the corner. From there, though, Zverev secures the hold with an ace down the T and, on the plus side for him, he’s playing almost as well as he can; but, on the minus, it’s good enough only for a narrow lead, whereas Sinner has plenty of room for improvement so, if he manages to get better, should be able to take over.
Alexander Zverev (2) wins the first set against Jannik Sinner (1) 7-6(7)
NOW THEN! Out of very little, Zverev smites an inside-out forehand to the corner, roars with delight, and that’s the lead he knows he needs. There wasn’t much in the set, but if there was an aggressor, it was he, and on the balance of play deserves the advantage.
Sinner 6-6 Zverev (7-8) So Zverev slams an ace out wide, a first serve landed for the 11th time in a row in this breaker, ridiculous behaviour, and though Sinner does his best to stick in the next point, further calm thwacking means that, at 8-7, the German has a second set point, neither man yet to manage a mini-break.
Sinner 6-6 Zverev (7-6) Sinner sticks in the point, sprinting and sliding then, offered a ball which sits up, this might be the key point of the set and, when we look back, the match … but he swats a backhand wide. Set point Zverev … confiscated with some huge hits from the back. And at 6-6, an ace down the T means it’s now Sinner on the verge of going ahead.
Sinner 6-6 Zverev (5-4) Now two more holds for Zverev, the second with a monstrous ace, and this is getting tense now, the set and perhaps the match likely to be decided by the odd point. If Sinner can get a lead, especially given how the match has gone so far, he’ll be very hard to stop, and his seventh ace gives him 5-4, the intensity intensifying.
Sinner 6-6 Zverev (3-2) Sinner plants a forehand on to the sideline for 1-0 but, just as he’s wresting control of the next point, Zverev unleashes on a line forehand, again taking a risk – the kind he might not’ve done even six weeks ago. And again, it’s the Italian who looks the stronger in the next rally … and though he lands an inside-out forehand wide, the message is clear. An ace follows, then a service-winner, and Sinner leads 3-2, suddenly playing the better, more authoritative tennis.
Sinner 6-6 Zverev* Here comes the one like Jannik, successive. concussive forehands unloaded for 0-15. But Zverev, probably the player looking to take more risks and force the issue, makes 15-all, then rams an ace down the T; 30-15. Another service winner follows, then a wrong-footing backhand means we go to a tiebreaker, and the German will, I reckon, be feeling pretty good about the set (of tennis) he’s just played.
*Sinner 6-5 Zverev Just as I’m grousing that this match is missing a bit of craft, Sinner plays a lovely stooping volley for 30-0, but it remains the case, much more power than finesse on display. The game is secured with another ace, his sixth, and he guarantees himself at least a tiebreaker in this set; how will Zverev handle the pressure?
Sinner 5-5 Zverev* At 15-0, Sinner sends Zverev out wide with a forehand approach … then watches as it’s lasered back pst him, down the line. An ace then follows for 40-0, and though a framed return catches the tape and dies, more forehand violence secures another holds. Both men are serving well, but Sinner’s general play has much room for improvement.
*Sinner 5-4 Zverev A service winner makes 15-0, but at 30-all, some pressure. In comms, Andre notes Sinner isn’t hitting the ball as cleanly as against Djokovic – to which I’ll add it was the only match he’s done that in this competition. Of course, the then annihilates an inside-out forehand for 40-30, Zverev overhits one going cross, and he must now serve to stay in the set.
Sinner 4-4 Zverev* So far, Sinner has made no impression on the Zverev serve, and even facing a second delivery, a 122mph-er is too good. But Zverev then strays wide … so of course retorts by sending down a brute … then an ace, his first of the match. He can’t though, close out by meeting a drop with a drop, Sinner chasing it down and flicking a winner across the face of the net, then a hooked forehand once he’s almost out of the point falls wide, taking us to deuce. Sniff for Sinner, and a double follows, donating his first break point of the match, and Zverev will fear this going as it often does, the contest close until it isn’t. But the then champ frames a forehand once in the rally, a significant oversight, ands from there, a huge hold is secured.
Photograph: Ella Ling/Shutterstock
*Sinner 4-3 Zverev A leaping forehand winner makes 30-0 and an ace out wide follows, but consecutive backhand errors give Sinner something about which to think. So he ponders really hard, considering all his options, then serves big, flogs a backhand, and Zverev nets to hand over the hold.
Sinner 3-3 Zverev* So far, this is a very serve-heavy contest, not of the Sampras-Ivanisevic variety because these guys like to stay back, but we’re not seeing many rallies. Zverev holds to love, but mifght scoreboard pressure soo intervene?
*Sinner 3-2 Zverev Now then. An error from Sinner gives Zverev 0-15, then the German finds a terrific angle as they go backhand to backhand and corner to corner; 0-30. Naturally, an ace follows, the first of four straight points and that’s now 68 consecutive service games he’s won against Zverev.
Sinner 2-2 Zverev* So far, neither player has managed the merest sniff on return, but when Zverev serves powerfully but not so accurately, Sinner leaps into the rally and the error follows. But it’s soon 30-15, the German hammering a telling serve down the middle, and though he doesn’t do enough with a volley – his hands remain heavy – he’s in danger. By Sinner’s riposte is wide, raising game point … but as they unload from the back next rally, his strikers are the purer and he makes 40-30, but doesn’t do enough attacking a second serve, so Zverev punishes him with an inside-out forehand winner. Both players are now loose, but the match remains tight.
*Sinner 2-1 Zverev Zverev is looking to take it on and though he finds himself down 30-0, this is a good sign for him – he can’t win by playing tentatively, Sinner is much too precise and consistent for that. A point he proves at 40-0, hauling his man to the net then leaving him stranded with a lob.
Sinner 1-1 Zverev* So how are Zverev’s nerves? Well, he begins with a service winner down the T, a second goes unreturned, and a third, his fastest serve of the championship at 141mph, takes him to 40-0. And from there, he secures a love hold; I daresay we’ll see a tiebreaker or two today.
*Sinner 1-0 Zverev At 15-0, our first long rally, Sinner the dominant power util Zverev ups the pace on the forehand … then tries a drop, winning the ensuing net exchange. That he won the point is a good sign, but how he one it is what’s really important, hitting harder from the back then taking initiative to change it up; impressive work. And when Sinner swipes a backhand wide, he has 15-30 … for as long at it takes for an ace to shriek by, then a service winner raises game point, the champ now into it, and when a return goes long, he secures the hold.
Jannik Sinner to serve, ready … play.
Zverev will, I think, have to find a way of putting Sinner on his bike, because if he’s allowed to plant feet, he’s almost impossible to beat thanks to the accuracy of his hitting, especially on the forehand. Thing is, I’m not sure he has the hands or variety to do it – can he slice effectively, and can he get himself to the net?
Zverev wins the toss and elects to receive. I imagine he wants a game to play himself into comfort before facing the pressure of holding, which makes sense – this is his first Wimbledon final and doubtless he’s feeling it. Sinner will, I’m sure, be happy to get us going.
Our players come down the stairs and out on to Centre Court. It looks beautiful out there.
I’m pleased to report that the coolest man in the post-Borg era , Stefan Edberg, is in situ; I’m even more pleased to report that Raye is in the row behind. I’d very much like for them to become friends.
Sinner leads the head-to-head 10-4 but has won the last nine matches, breaking Zverev 24 times to one. However, he’s yet to face Zverev playing with the freedom of a grand slam champion, nor in the form he’s in now.
Pat Cash reckons this is the slowest Wimbledon he’s seen but isn’t sure if the court, the balls, or both. I think that’ll help Sinner, because he’s brilliant at hitting when he has time – I can’t think of many players more consistent in that regard – and he’s also better at hitting spots on serve, whereas Zverev gives himself greater margin for error, relying more heavily on power and speed.
That French Open situation had an effect on Sinner, I think. Before it, he looked – and, I bet, felt – impregnable. He arrived at Roland-Garros having won 29 matches in a row, but his body packing up on him will have given him some doubts and the rest of the tour some hope. It doesn’t mean there are weaknesses in his game, but it has affected his fluency and aura.
So what of our match? Zverev has played really well in his last two matches, the best I’ve ever seen him play on grass, and his on-court confidence is higher than ever before. His serve and backhand are always sensational, but his forehand is much improved, likewise his volleying; if he maintains he level, he’s got a chance.
Sinner, though, is just the better player – by a way – and, after a forcing his way to early wins, including coming from 2-1 down in round one, he turned it on in the semi, wiping Djokovic off the court. He has no weaknesses, so beating him is a problem: Zverev will have to serve lights out, hope the match goes long, and Sinner’s body lets him down. Otherwise, the consistency of the Italian’s hitting makes him an overwhelming favourite.
Mazal tov dept: regular readers will be familiar with Coach Calv Betton, our resident expert. Well, yesterday, Calv’s charge Henry Patten won his second men’s doubles title with his partner Harri Heliovvara. I can assure you it couldn’t happen to three nicer lads.
Also going on:
Preamble
Can we ever heal our deepest wounds? For many of us, that’s a question we barely acknowledge, the pain of childhood and thereafter buried because we have neither time nor confidence nor inclination to engage. Instead, it gnaws at our convictions, integrity and identity, stopping us from connecting to those closest to us and also to ourselves.
Sport, though, is not like that: rather, those wounds are dangled in faces, often in public, becoming the subject of debate, conjecture and gags. It’s fair to say, say, that Jimmy White has an inkling he never became world snooker champion, just as Chris Waddle well recalls chriswaddling his penalty an acre or so over the bar when England lost to Germany in the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup.
There is, though, an upside to this nose-rubbing, at least while a career remains in progress: the opportunity to resolve the situation with the accordant glory compounded by the preceding failure. So, though interviewers tend not to remind us of that time we pulled down our pants as well as our trousers when changing for our first-ever PE lesson, or called our teacher Mum, or a teacher stomped our harmonica to pieces with her high heels in front of the class, or our parents told our friends we were showing off because we were overtired, or we lit the filter of a cigarette while chatting up a girl, or our friends dressed up in our parents’ clothes, or our parents wrote to our friends asking them to stop distracting us from our A-level revision, or we were told, emphatically, by people charged with our safety, that we were defective and shameful in various ways and so on and so on, we’re stuck with those things. We can process and absorb, but can never eradicate or forget.
In the 2025 Australian Open final, Jannik Sinner destroyed Alexander Zverev. It wasn’t Zverev’s first such defeat – in 2020, he lost the US Open final to Dominic Thiem from two sets up and, in 2024, was pipped in a five-set French Open final by Carlos Alcaraz. But that match in Melbourne was the first time he’d been outclassed – and, for extra agony, by a younger man who was still improving, with two of the previous three majors claied by an even younger one still. “I’m just not good enough” was Zverev’s summation of events, his desolation palpable.
But the thing about sport is that it offers constant scope for professional redemption and, though things seemed hopeless at the time, Zverev was soon offered a shot at it. Before this year’s Roland-Garros, he knew Alcaraz would be absent injured so, when Sinner’s body gave out early in the competition, he was presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. And, though he made hard work of it, he got it done, just about, the accolade he feared he’d never achieve his forever.
Yet he still knows the truth: in order to get what he wanted, he needed circumstances to conspire in his favour. There’s no asterisk in the record books, but you can be sure there’s one in his mind, just as there is in ours: we could all win a big pot if all the players better than us weren’t involved.
Today’s match offers Zverev an opportunity to change his reality: should he beat Sinner in a Wimbledon final, his status as a tennis player is guaranteed, his wounds salved, healed and expunged with his losses part of a hero narrative in which he overcomes fears, setbacks and tribulations before achieving his destiny.
Easier said than done. Though Sinner was, by his standards, poor at the start of the fortnight, he was magnificent in destroying Novak Djokovic on Friday and knows he has the calmness his opponent lacks – so too the reliable forehand and net-game. And he is in pursuit of his own legacy, hoping to snaffle slams in the absence of a greatest rival who currently has seven to his four. Just as this is a big opportunity for Zverev, so is it for him – but after what happened in Paris, he’ll be experiencing doubts that have never assailed him before.
Or, in other words, both men will be feeling a way when they step out on to Centre Court this afternoon – and, because we understand what it means to wrestle, sabotage and distrust ourselves, so too will we.
Play: 4pm BST
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