For all his leaps and lunges, Jannik Sinner was hardly sweating. It was a relatively cool afternoon in Queens, but the tennis phenom’s bone-dry shirt had more to do with the ease with which he’d just dismantled his opponent, Taylor Fritz, in a three-set U.S. Open final on September 8.
It was over quickly, the sort of match that allows fans to saunter back to Manhattan well ahead of their dinner reservations. And it went perfectly for Sinner, the 23-year-old who’d just won the second Grand Slam of his career, upheld his World No. 1 title (the first Italian to reach that rank), and gotten a nice big trophy to show off at his Monte Carlo homecoming (he owns a house there). Seemingly nothing could sour such an idyllic moment.
