Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are the present, and future

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner do it again on Sunday, this time at Centre Court, Wimbledon, still the only place in their sport worth talking about. They do it again after a French Open final between them that made tennis feel as big as it did when Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic were beating everyone and winning everything. We got spoiled by the rivalries they brought to the whole thing, and for such a long time. But maybe here comes another rivalry, another one that might be built to last.

Here comes Alcaraz-Sinner II, another Grand Slam final between them. The last one, in Paris, was the best tennis match I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them. Now, barely over a month later, the two of them fight for the heavyweight title of their sport all over again. Sometimes it can still happen like this. When it does, everybody wins, especially if this one is anywhere close to the last one.

Back in the Wimbledon final of 1980, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe played what will always be known as the “tiebreaker match” because of a 4th set tiebreaker that ended up 18-16 for McEnroe after 22 minutes. Borg finally won that match — and his fifth straight Wimbledon — 8-6 in the fifth. Two-and-a-half months later, they played a five-setter just as long and as rousing in the finals of the U.S. Open. Johnny Mac came away the winner that time.

Alcaraz vs. Sinner in Paris was better than the tiebreaker match, and better than the legendary five-setter between Federer and Nadal at Wimbledon in 2008, the one that ended in near-darkness at 9-7 for Nadal in the fifth set, after four hours and 48 minutes.

Alcaraz vs. Sinner at Roland Garros, on the second Sunday in June: Five hours and 29 minutes. Alcaraz coming from two sets to none down. Alcaraz fighting off three straight match points in the fourth set. They finally went the distance, all the way to a match tiebreaker in the final set (first to 10 points). At that point, after everything we had seen from him and from Sinner, somehow the kid did this amazing thing:

He turned into a combination of Nadal AND Federer.

Yeah, he did. He fired away from the baseline, from both sides, the way Nadal did, ran down balls the way Nadal always did back when Jimmy Connors used to say that Nadal “plays like he’s broke.” Somehow, though, in this same stretch of luminous tennis, he was also able to show you the same feathery touch and imagination that Federer had.

Now here they are again.

They have combined to win eight majors already, and the last seven in a row. If Alcaraz wins, this will be his sixth major, and will make him 6-0 in Grand Slam finals (he has also only lost one five-set match in his life). If you are looking for historical context, Nadal had five majors by the time he was 22, Federer had one, Djokovic one. So if Alcaraz gets Sinner again, he will have just one fewer major title than Federer and Nadal and Djokovic combined had at the same age.

It’s also worth noting that Djokovic — still stuck on 24 majors after losing to Sinner in the Wimbledon semis on Friday — didn’t win his sixth major championship until he was 27 years old.

On Sunday at Wimbledon, Alcaraz and Sinner will get their chance to throw more Borg-McEnroe and more Federer-Nadal at us; play the kind of big-game tennis that Djokovic played against both Fed and Rafa across his remarkable career in Grand Slam semis and finals.

But Djokovic is the past now, whether he comes back for one more Wimbledon or not. Alcaraz and Sinner are the present, and the future. Sinner beat Djokovic in the semifinals of the French in June. Alcaraz beat Djokovic in the Wimbledon finals of 2024 and ’25. After the most extraordinary era in the history of men’s tennis, after 66 majors from Djokovic and Federer and Nadal — if you’re keeping score at home, Borg and McEnroe and Jimmy Connors combined to win 26 — now we get Alcaraz and Sinner. Just getting started.

They have played just 12 matches so far, Alcaraz with an 8-4 edge (Borg and McEnroe only played 14 times before Borg walked away from the sport at 24). But the rivalry feels like more, because of Paris, and because of their record in Grand Slam finals lately:

One U.S. Open and two Australian Opens for Sinner.

One Open for Alcaraz, two French Opens, two Wimbledons so far.

Again: Alcaraz is 22. Sinner is 23.

“I watch [highlights of the French Open final] sometimes and still can’t believe that I did it,” Alcaraz said recently.

There are no great rivalries in team sports these days. There is no Bird vs. Magic. You have Patrick Mahomes in the NFL, but he has a lot of rivals at quarterback, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson and now Jalen Hurts, too. We did have Aaron Judge vs. Shohei Ohtani for a blink last October, but you know it’s different in baseball, even with the two most prodigious sluggers or our time. LeBron went at Steph Curry in a couple of NBA finals, but that never felt like Bird against Magic, it just didn’t. Michael Jordan never had a rival. Neither did Tiger Woods.

Tennis, though, just in the open era, had Borg and McEnroe and Connors against both of them. It had Pete Sampras vs. Andre Agassi. On the women’s side, of course there was Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova, as good a rivalry as there ever was in anything, both of them walking away with 18 major titles in singles. Truly, the most memorable opponent Serena Williams ever had was her sister, Venus.

But maybe there is a chance now with Alcaraz and Sinner. By early Sunday evening in London we really will know whether the two of them have done it again, produced another major final that will be remember barely over a month from their first one. We will see if the contrasts in their styles, the kind of contrast we had with Ali vs. Frazier once, will already have us hoping they do it a third time this year, at Arthur Ashe Stadium in the finals of the U.S. Open in September, and wouldn’t that be something?

Even people who don’t care much for tennis ended up being pulled into that French Open final the longer it went last month, the way the match kept getting better and the story kept getting bigger, Alcaraz coming back the way he did — coming back from two sets down and then three straight match points later — against the No. 1 player in the world.

A match like that wasn’t just about tennis. It was about the magic of sports. We still come to sports for moments exactly like it. Maybe Alcaraz and Sinner can give us another one at Wimbledon.