Love-all: how Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner’s rivalry turned tennis from a bloodsport into a bromance
Tennis is hard. To succeed you need to be fast, strong, have deft hands and joints of steel. It’s also a solo sport against a single opponent so you need to be a strategist as well as an athlete. The games can go for more than five hours. The elite players compete for large pools of prize money, fiercely defend their rankings and travel the world constantly to maintain their edge. They play for 11 months of the year.
Tennis is also incredibly chic.
And despite the ferocious competition and lonely lifestyle, tennis is in its sweetheart era.
The men’s draw is home to the most wholesome rivalry in living memory. The world No 1 and 2 have been exchanging those rankings for years, they normally play the finals of major competitions against one another and the wildest thing about them? They seem to genuinely like each other.
Carlos Alcaraz is a freakish player, he grew up in a tennis centre in Spain, is elite at every shot, has an ability to be everywhere on the court and has a fierce competitor mindset. He also seems to have........
