It could only be heard in the quiet before a serve. An unmistakable drumbeat, the bass reverberating to a rhythm throughout the 162 minutes it took for Jannik Sinner to win his third grand slam title. This one was in straight sets, over the willing but outmatched Alexander Zverev.
Where the sound was coming from, nobody could say. It had the unhtz of techno, and there had been a particularly loud set pumping out of the party court in Melbourne Park an hour before the final began. But that music was scheduled to end, like all the other attractions, making way for the Australian Open’s traditional Sunday-night tennis climax.
This clash had a tempo of dominance by the world No 1: serving in four-four time, a bassline from the baseline. The percussion was coming from outside Rod Laver arena but here inside the strings section of Sinner’s virtuosity was obvious.
The Italian did not give up a single break-point chance against the world No 2. On championship point, he seemed to amplify the German’s misery as a drop shot transformed the normally statuesque Zverev into Bambi on the blue Melbourne Park ice.
Sinner now has back-to-back Australian Open trophies and is one of only eight players who have won their first three grand slam finals, following in the footsteps of Carlos Alcaraz, another of the newest generation who have now surpassed the likes of Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Daniil Medvedev.
Sunday night threatened to be the revenge of the 1990s gang. Sinner had looked vulnerable against Holger Rune in the round of 16, and the highest seed he had beaten here was the eighth, Alex de Minaur. Zverev – born in 1997 – had arrived in supreme form and was fresh from his abbreviated defeat of Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals. But it was Sinner – born in 2001 – who was consoling the German at the end. “It was a bit of a tough moment for me because I really went into the final, and also [from] the preparation today, I really thought I had a very good chance because I was feeling good,” Zverev said.
From the time Zverev walked on to the court in rollerblader red, this was not to be the 27-year-old’s night. He resembled a surly teen for much of it, unable to find a way to combat Sinner’s power and control. His attempts to come forward largely ended in failure, scratching out barely one in two points at the net.
At 4-4 in the crucial second-set tie-break, when a net cord handed a point to the Italian, Zverev’s shoulders slumped. He turned to his team and slowly moped back to the baseline. There were moments of frustration, flashes of racket abuse, but even these had the half-heartedness of adolescence. “I’m serving better than him, but that’s it,” Zverev reflected afterwards. “He does everything else better than me. He moves better than me. He hits his forehand better than me. He hits his backhand better than me. He returns better than me. He volleys better than me.”
Across the net from the chiselled Zverev was a gangly young man wearing an outfit of lemon meringue, finished off with a yellow cap. Walking with an awkward gait and bowed legs. With a skin condition that makes him itchy on his feet and his back. This first impression of Sinner is not of Novak Djokovic’s athleticism, Rafa Nadal’s stamina, or Roger Federer’s grace. But his game is pure, the results irrefutable. This is a creature not of this world, a spider entangling its prey one groundstroke at a time.
As the match approached its crescendo in the second set, for a moment that incessant bass came to resemble a pulse. This was by no means a classic contest but there were moments of tension that reminded the 15,000 fans in the stadium these are the world’s two best players.
Hearts were racing at 5-6 in the second set with Sinner serving at 30-30, and Zverev was just two points from the set. It was the closest the German would come. The 21-shot rally was finally won by Sinner with a backhand at the net. Both players had covered the entire court in a display that left them panting and the crowd upstanding. But the second set soon passed and the third quickly gave way, the result as inevitable as the sound.
An Australian Open staff member finally identified the source of it at the end of the match. The racket was coming not from Melbourne Park but from an electronic music festival a kilometre away. This is a result that will be heard far further afield. As Zverev reflected about Sinner: “He’s in a different universe right now to everyone else.”
