Alcaraz against Sinner: After a classic, an encore at Big W

MUMBAI: Feels like yesterday, doesn't it, when Carlos Alcaraz slumped to the Roland Garros red dirt after giving us the collective high of a five-set, five-hour, five-star final for the ages with Jannik Sinner.

- Rutvick Mehta

Perhaps you've relived its several edge-of-the-seat moments scrolling through the highlights (or reels, if you're from a certain generation). Alcaraz hasn't. Just a few points here and there, he said. He doesn’t need to. He's playing the same man at the same stage again on Sunday.

Hello, Wimbledon final — whether or not you've bid a mental goodbye to the French Open final. “I don’t know if it'll get better,” said Sinner, “because I don't think it’s possible.” The bar, indeed, after a battle that had Alcaraz wipe off a two-set deficit and three championship points to script a surreal triumph, is set sky high. As high as the two protagonists born one year apart have set inmen’s tennis. Noone, not even a24-time Grand Slam champion, has come close to them in Slams at the moment.