“Thanks for pushing me to the limit,” Sinner said to his team afterward. “Trying to learn again how to play on this surface.”
Sinner’s triumph does a lot for him—for his ranking, his season, his chances at Roland Garros, even his place in history. As Alcaraz noted, the Italian is the second player, after Novak Djokovic in 2015, to win the Sunshine Double on hard courts in Indian Wells and Miami, and then cross the Atlantic to win Monte Carlo on clay two weeks later. Whatever we call this achievement, it’s a sign of rare versatility and persistence.
Maybe most significantly, the win marks Sinner’s first successful foray onto his main rival’s turf. Alcaraz, in the tradition of his countryman Rafael Nadal, has made clay his kingdom. He has won 11 of his 26 titles on it, including the last two at Roland Garros. On the flipside, he has had no trouble invading Sinner’s hard-court home base, beating him seven times on that surface. Now Sinner has launched a counterattack.
