Witnessing tennis history – and the longest French Open final of all time – was both a privilege and the ultimate test of bladder endurance. But thank you, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, for the five hours and 29 minutes of astonishing athleticism, spell-binding shot-making, remarkable resilience and drama of the highest order in producing a match that will forever be in the discussion for the greatest of all time. I’m not going to pretend that I saw Bjorn Borg defeat John McEnroe in the 1980 Wimbledon final, while, on a personal level, Rafael Nadal’s epic triumph over Roger Federer and the fading light on Centre Court to win the 2008 Wimbledon final will forever be tinted by a certain nostalgia that heightens the emotions.
But one of the joys of witnessing what Alcaraz and Sinner produced on Sunday and feeling every point is that it is, retrospectively, impossible to properly summarise all the moments of magic and astonishing twists, as the two young rivals pushed themselves and their electric rivalry into another galaxy. I have a Google Doc that will forever now be enshrined with the title “Alcaraz and Sinner draft”, where I was making game-by-game notes, piecing together a running narrative of the final, and formulating dual intros to cover both outcomes. It reached nearly 4,000 words– the majority of which was rendered completely useless by the time Alcaraz had saved three match points to stay alive and then Sinner climbed off the canvas to force the fifth-set tiebreak.
