“We’re going to take you back in time,” begins Pete Odgers in his commentary of the very first match between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. It took place not during the early rounds of a Grand Slam tournament, or at a relatively low-stakes ATP 250. Rather, it took place on the ATP Challenger Tour.
The setting was Alicante, a coastal city in Spain’s southeast. It was April 2019, when Sinner was ranked 319th in the world and Alcaraz didn’t even have an ATP ranking. But the clearest indicator that we’re not in 2025 is the crowd on hand. Alcaraz vs. Sinner is appointment viewing for tennis fans of all degrees today, but back then, you could count how many people were in the stands.
And they are some of the luckiest tennis fans in the world.
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This Challenger clash between the 15-year-old Spaniard and the 17-year-old Italian was the equivalent of watching Nolan Ryan take the mound for the Single-A Greenville Mets, or Mike Tyson’s first fight in Albany, N.Y. All transformative talents begin somewhere—but in this case, you get to watch two of them play one another.
And now, it’s available to stream in full, by subscribing to the Tennis Channel app.
