TORONTO — For the first time, Jannik Sinner is the last man standing at a Masters 1000-level event. And it’s easy to believe the victory is just one step forward in what’s shaping up to be a promising career.
Sinner won the National Bank Open on Sunday evening with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Alex de Minaur on centre court at Sobeys Stadium. After sweating it out during a first set in which the two players basically took turns breaking each other’s serve, Sinner found his groove in the second and swatted de Minaur, his doubles partner, off the court.
“It feels amazing,” the lanky Italian said. “Great result, one I can share with all my team, with all the people that are close to me, even if they’re not here physically.
“This is from every tennis player’s dream, no? To win one of these tournaments.”
Sinner, ranked No. 7 in the tournament and eight in the world, was 0-2 in his previous attempts in a 1000-level final. Now, after losing the 2021 Miami Open to Hubert Hurkacz and the 2023 Miami tournament to Daniil Medvedev, the Italian who turns 22 years old on Wednesday has punched through.
“I think everything together I was doing better [today] than in the previous two finals in the Masters series,” he said. “I was very focused about my game, what I had to do, and I felt like I was executing it in the right way. So I’m very happy.”
While Sinner eventually got the result he hoped for, early on it seemed as though de Minaur could conceivably continue playing the role of giant-killer at this event. The unseeded Aussie had already knocked out No. 8-ranked Taylor Fritz and Medvedev, the No. 2 seed, earlier in the draw. He came into this match 0-4 lifetime versus Sinner and quickly found himself down 2-0 in the first set. But de Minaur — whose presence in the final made it four of the last five NBO’s we’ve seen an unseeded finalist — broke right back in the third game. When Sinner broke serve in the seventh game and threatened to run away with the first set, a determined de Minaur broke back again to make it 4-3. It wasn’t until the end of the set, when Sinner held to go up 5-4 and scored four straight points to break de Minaur in the next game, that the former started to pull away.
“I felt like I was returning very well,” Sinner said. “He was changing the game very, very [well], especially when he was playing with the wind [which was a bit of a factor]. He is lightning fast, so sometimes you have to go in the same corner again. But I just tried to find the right balance on how much I have to push. And, yeah, sometimes I have to stay in the rally a little bit more. The first set was very important. In the second set, I was hitting a little bit more freer.”
Indeed, by the time Sinner broke de Minaur to go up 3-1 in the second, the outcome was starting to feel inevitable — probably even to de Minaur.
“The game plan was that; trying to mix up my speeds, trying to not give him pace all the time because he’s very good with pace,” said de Minaur, who lost a first-round doubles match alongside Sinner. “I tried to mix in some slices and some slower balls.
“But ultimately, then it got to a level where I felt like he started to dictate a little bit more and I was on the back foot a lot more. He started to feel his ground strokes a little bit more. I tried to push myself and be a little bit more aggressive, which kind had a bit of a negative effect, obviously, today.”
In a field scrambled by top seeds falling, Sinner never veered off course. He caught a break when three-time NBO champion Andy Murray had to withdraw ahead of their third-round match due to abdominal issue, but Sinner dropped just a single set — to Gael Monfils in the quarters — en route to hoisting the trophy.
Much of the pre-tournament chatter was understandably focused on World No. 1 and 2023 Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, who fell in the quarterfinals. Milos Raonic — playing in Toronto for the first time since 2018 — sent Canadian tennis fans into a tizzy with a couple throwback victories in Rd. 1 and 2.
And de Minaur — playing in a tournament final for the second time in as many weeks — certainly turned some heads. In addition to besting Medvedev and Fritz, he also beat world No. 13 Cameron Norrie in the first round and will see his own ATP rank jump to No. 12 as he departs Canada.
In the end, though, it was Sinner — a semifinalist at Wimbledon one month ago — who dominated the final conversation with his impressive break-through showing.
It certainly made an impression on de Minaur.
“Jannik is a hell of a player,” de Minaur said. “He’s got some of the hardest ground strokes I’ve probably ever dealt, to be honest. All these things I knew coming in. I knew what to expect. I think, ultimately, he kind of executed his game plan a little bit better than I was able to do”
Sinner will now carry that approach forward to the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati this week and, of course, to the U.S. Open after that. He figures to play his first match in Ohio on his birthday in a couple days and, for this young man, just being on the court is all he could ask for.
“This is going to be the third year in a row — if they put me Wednesday — that I’m going to play [a match] during my birthday, a match, which I think is the best gift, no?” he said. “Because this is what I love to do, [my] passion. Stepping on the court, having the fans [with whom] you can share this moment — which, as I said, three years in a row — it’s always a nice gift.”
Birthday or not, it feels like there are more celebrations coming in Sinner’s life very soon.