Sinner, a champion's mentality: "I'm very happy to be taking part in the next round".

© AFP

Elio Valotto

le 22/06/2024 à 12h54

2 min to read

Halle Sinner Struff Zhang

At the start of the grass-court season, a number of top players are finding it difficult to adapt, as evidenced by the early eliminations of Alcaraz, Rublev, Dimitrov, Fritz, Medvedev and De Minaur.

However, this is not the case for all the members of the "Top Ten". Indeed, Jannik Sinner, the world's new number 1, is doing his utmost. Without having rediscovered his best tennis, as the Italian himself admits he is still adjusting to the surface, he won three consecutive matches to reach the semi-finals of the Halle tournament.

After two rather difficult opening matches, Sinner went through all kinds of emotions on Friday. Faced with an over-motivated Jan-Lennard Struff at home, the 22-year-old needed 2 hours 30 minutes of battle to get through. As solid as ever on serve (14 aces, 87% of points won on the first ball), the Transalpine was cruelly lacking in return efficiency (2 break points converted out of 19). Although he had a considerable number of break points, he converted very few of them and had to wait until the tie-break of the 3rd set to make the difference (6-2, 6-7, 7-6 in 2 h 30).

Bluffingly solid, the right-hander confessed his relief at the press conference: "It was a really tough match. I had chances in the 2nd and chances in the 3rd, but I just couldn't take them. It was all my fault. It was 0-40, he was serving. I just tried to accept this kind of challenge.

It was very tough mentally. I'm very happy to be in the next round, it's a great victory. I played a lot yesterday and today. 2 hours on grass is a long time.

I'm going to try and recover for tomorrow. I hope I can play some good tennis in the semi-final (against Zhang, not until 3pm this Saturday).