The way his year went, some might forget that Jannik Sinner had never gone back-to-back in winning a Grand Slam title before 2025.
He accomplished the feat at the Australian Open, paving the way for another highly successful season — but a season with some hiccups, too, despite a hefty 58-6 record.
Let’s look back at his 2025, which saw the Northern Italian become the youngest man in the Open Era to make four Grand Slam finals in a single season.
The new Novak Down Under?
Sinner has a long, long way to go to catch Novak Djokovic but given his hard-court prowess, who would rule the 24-year-old out of getting close to the Serb’s 10 crowns at Melbourne Park?
Flashing back to January, the consensus before the final against Alexander Zverev was that it was more or less a 50-50.
Zverev didn’t expend as much energy as usual in going deep at Slams, which perhaps led him to say after his truncated semifinal win over Djokovic, “I do feel like I have done the work, and I do feel like I'm ready” (to win his first major).
Zverev also led Sinner 4-2 in their head-to-heads.
But Sinner stepped on the gas, not facing a single break point in a straight-set win.
Time off tour
Why did Sinner only play 64 matches when he was mostly free of significant injuries? A three-month suspension for testing positive for a banned substance last year kept him out from after the Australian Open through the Madrid Masters in May.
Read also: Alcaraz, Sinner Headline Best Stories from 2025 ATP Season
That’s not to say that Sinner didn’t have any fitness issues. He retired against his main rival, Carlos Alcaraz, due to a virus in the final of the Cincinnati Masters in August and retired again with cramps against Tallon Griekspoor at the Shanghai Masters in October.
Sinner admitted that lady luck smiled on him in the fourth round of the Australian Open when, feeling unwell and needing a medical timeout facing Holger Rune, the net broke. He benefited from a lengthy stoppage to regroup.
That final against Carlos
You know which one we’re talking about. For so many years at the French Open, Rafa (Nadal) ensured less than dramatic men’s finals given his unmatched dominance on the clay courts.
With Nadal now retired, Sinner and Alcaraz produced what many tennis fans considered one of the greatest matches of all time.
Alcaraz saved three match points — three in a row — in the fourth set and played an electrifying final-set tiebreak to prevail, 4-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2) in five hours, 29 minutes.
Wimbledon comeback
Losing a Grand Slam final, especially in such circumstances, could have easily derailed Sinner’s season. Zverev’s defeat to Sinner in Melbourne seemed to take a lingering toll on the German, while Daniil Medvedev suffered a similar fate after his loss from two sets up against Nadal at the Australian Open in 2022.
Sinner, though, responded on the grass, going all the way at Wimbledon and handing Alcaraz his first loss in six Grand Slam finals.
For Sinner, he looked at the Roland Garros loss as the glass being half full.
“I believe if you lose a Grand Slam final that way, it's much better like this than someone kills you, that you make two games,” he said right after the Wimbledon final. “Then after, you keep going, keep pushing.”
In their hat-trick of consecutive Grand Slam finals, Alcaraz got the better of Sinner in New York to extend his record to 4-2 in their duels at majors.
Almost unbeatable on hard courts
Sinner contested the majority of his matches on hard courts in 2025 — and only one player (excluding a retirement), beat him. Yes, of course, it was Alcaraz. Sinner went 39-3 on hard, ending 2025 with a 15-match winning streak and not dropping a set as he repeated at the ATP Finals at home.
Read also: Sinner tops Alcaraz to win ATP Finals
He dropped only seven sets in those 39 wins, to Tristan Schoolkate, Rune, Terence Atmane, Alex de Minaur, Zverev and two Canadians, Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger Aliassime.
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Feature Photo: ATP Tour
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