Life is good for Jannik Sinner. The man of the moment after a rousing end-of-season run that brought titles in Beijing and Vienna, an appearance in the title round at the ATP Finals and a talismanic contribution to Italy’s Davis Cup triumph, Sinner won all but two of his final 22 singles matches and was voted fans’ favourite and most improved player in the ATP awards.
Yet the case for Sinner as the player who made the greatest strides over the past 12 months is by no means clear-cut. Before we get to the Italian, it should be acknowledged that, on numbers as well as for sheer romance, Christopher Eubanks has a barely less compelling claim to recognition as 2023’s most improved performer.
The 27-year-old American began the season ranked No 124 and ended it 90 places higher. He came through qualifying in Miami to make a first Masters 1000 quarter-final. He claimed a maiden ATP title on the grass courts of Mallorca. And he marked his debut in the main draw of Wimbledon with a first grand slam quarter-final. In the sixth season of a career stalled at its midpoint by the global pandemic, Eubanks belatedly came of age.
With the dramatic and emotional win over Grégoire Barrère that secured his top-100 breakthrough, Eubanks also provided us with one of the season’s most heart-warming vignettes.
Hovering on the brink of a double-digit ranking for several weeks only to be thwarted by a run of four straight defeats, the Atlantan was no longer focused on crossing the threshold by the time he arrived in Miami. So when, fortified by a locker-room pep talk from Frances Tiafoe during a rain delay, he battled back from four set points down to close out a 6-3, 7-6 (9-7) third-round victory over Barrère, Eubanks was caught unawares by the revelation of his coach, Ruan Roelofse, that he had just cracked the top 100.
“What just happened?” said Eubanks, who returned to his chair, head clearly spinning, before covering his face with a towel as the magnitude of the achievement hit home.
Even in that moment of personal triumph, the sheer decency of the man shone through, Eubanks approaching the umpire’s chair to offer an apology. “Sorry, I didn’t shake your hand,” he said – an oversight that even the hardest heart would surely have forgiven in the circumstances. It was a typically considerate display from a player whose reputation as one of the goodest eggs in the game seems entirely merited.
Given that Eubanks made such strides, why plump for Sinner as the season’s most improved player? Dear reader, it was no easy decision. As demonstrated by the selection of Sorana Cirstea as the year’s most improved women’s player, we bow to no one in our admiration for a late-career flourish. But at 27, Eubanks doesn’t quite fall into that category. In fact, the suspicion is that he is only just getting started.
The same may be said for Sinner, who elevated his game to new heights over the second half of a season that featured a first major semi-final at Wimbledon, a maiden Masters 1000 title in Toronto, a final run in Turin, and a pivotal role in Italy’s first Davis Cup victory for 47 years. It is over two years since the 22-year-old first broke into the top 10 and, while his ranking rise is numerically modest compared with those of Eubanks, Ben Shelton and Matteo Arnaldi, his rival nominees for the ATP most improved award, Sinner’s progress from 15th at the turn of the year to a career high of No 4 feels every bit as significant. A rapid ascent is one thing; thriving at altitude, where the air is thinner and the expectations greater, is quite another.
But it is not only because the final few steps on the rankings ladder are the toughest that Sinner gets our vote. Aside from breaking the top four for the first time, he also laid down a marker for next season by beating all three players who finished the year ranked above him. He defeated Carlos Alcaraz for the fourth time in seven meetings at the China Open and claimed a first win over Daniil Medvedev in the final, ending a six-match losing streak against the Russian. Demonstrating that he is nothing if not a quick learner, Sinner then went on to get the better of Medvedev in Vienna and Turin.
Yet the most significant of the Italian’s 13 top-10 wins in 2023 – 10 more than his previous best, incidentally, another barometer of his improvement – came against Novak Djokovic. Sinner defeated the Serbian world No 1 for the first time in four meetings in the round-robin stage of the ATP Finals, ending Djokovic’s 19-match post-Wimbledon winning run. If that breakthrough offered further evidence of Sinner’s undoubted pedigree, more was forthcoming at the Davis Cup finals in Málaga, where he not only foiled Djokovic again, but achieved the unprecedented distinction of doing so twice in a day.
The first win, a 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 comeback from triple match point down – a position from which Djokovic had never previously been beaten in his 20-year professional career – pulled Italy back from the brink of a 2-0 semi-final defeat to Serbia. The second, a straight-sets decision over Djokovic and Miomir Kecmanovic alongside Lorenzo Sonego, handed Filippo Volandri’s side a historic semi-final victory.
Even allowing for a 14-year age difference and the rigours of a long season, Sinner’s ability to deny Djokovic a triumphant conclusion to his landmark season tells you everything you need to know about the Italian’s odds of making a grand slam breakthrough in 2024. He is no longer the same player outclassed by the Serb at Wimbledon. Sinner has always possessed some of the best groundstrokes in the sport, but the greater variety and tactical agility he has added this year have elevated his game to a new level. Stronger on serve, sounder at the net, and no less willing to venture forward himself than he is to draw opponents in with drop shots, he has made advances in almost every area of the game.
These improvements undoubtedly owe much to the influence of Simone Vagnozzi and Darren Cahill, the coaches Sinner added to his team last year after parting ways with his childhood mentor Riccardo Piatti. Yet they also speak to an insatiable work ethic and determination, qualities that were nowhere more apparent than in Beijing, where Sinner showed extraordinary physical and mental resilience to overcome injury and illness en route to the third of his four title wins this season.
While Eubanks learned this year to have faith in the weapons already at his disposal, Sinner actively set about expanding his skillset, even skipping tournaments he might otherwise have played in favour of hitting the practice court. The resulting gains are plain to see.
“When we started the year I was one player, and now I’m another,” Sinner reflected at the ATP Finals.
“I always say when you are 22 years old, you can only improve and learn, no? My process, especially this year, was a good process, because we practised a lot also during tournaments. We didn’t play a couple of tournaments [in order] to practice, to get better physically.
“This for me, in my way, helped me a lot to come [to the] end of the season quite fresh – not only physically but also mentally, ready to play.”
Sinner tied Adriano Panatta and Francesca Schiavone as the highest-ranked Italian player in history in 2023, yet domestic concerns are merely a footnote at this stage. Confirmed as a card-carrying member of the game’s elite, he has emerged as the man most likely to become the next new grand slam champion. Improvement doesn’t get much more impressive than that.