Now that our favorite Sinner has wrapped up his season, I thought I'd try to gather my thoughts on what we are witnessing. Forgive the verbosity, here goes nothing...
Without the post-Covid ranking freeze, Sinner would be finishing 2020 as - you guessed it - the 20th ranked player in the world. Nobody knows what might have happened had they played a full schedule, but it's reasonable to assume he'd be even a little higher than that. Furthermore, when you look at the big matches he lost in recent months, all of them felt like he should have or at least could have won: Kachanov in NY, Dimitrov in Rome, Zverev in Cologne and even Nadal in Paris. So in light of the above, it's safe to say his level is already up there with the very best in the game. Which, when you consider he was struggling in futures as recently as February 2019, is kinda scary.
However, while there's no arguing with the results, his game seems to have changed since the Bergamo days - and not in a way that everyone will be thrilled with. The devastating baseline aggressor, capable of petrifying opponents with lightning-speed winners from both sides, seems to have given way to a much more subdued and defensive player, certainly more consistent but also more monotonous. He also seems to be coming to the net much less, perhaps to minimize damage from what is clearly his biggest area of weakness. Finally, he seems to have mostly abandoned his trademark shot from the early part of his career - the backhand down the line - preferring instead to lock into the cross-court diagonal. Now, much of this may simply be a byproduct of superior competition. And he clearly retains the pace to wear out almost anyone. Still, he seems to be evolving into a different player than what many of us expected: a little less of a super-Berdych or a super-Klizan, and a little more of a poor man's Murray or a poor man's Djoker (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially when you put it in those terms...).
Thoughts?
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