Carlos Alcaraz: I studied Wimbledon final to beat Jannik Sinner in US Open rematch

NEW YORK—When Carlos Alcaraz lost his Wimbledon title to Jannik Sinner, he went back to the drawing board. Literally.

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In his post-victory press conference at the 2025 US Open, Alcaraz explained how the four-set defeat to Sinner inspired the Spaniard and his team to break down what went wrong at SW19 so he would be ready in time for a Flushing Meadows rematch:

Q. In the Wimbledon final, it felt like the match was played more on his terms, lots of baseline rallies. Today you were able to bring in more of your slices and spins and that kind of thing. I just wondered what you thought the difference was how you were able to get on top today?

CARLOS ALCARAZ: Yeah, I studied that match. I studied the Wimbledon final. As I said, I spoke with my coaches, and we saw the Wimbledon final, and yeah, we spoke about what we would have done better in that match just in case I'm going to face him in another time.

We watch it. We put everything, or we note everything, and we work on it. We just played that game. It doesn't matter. At the beginning, we thought, okay, it doesn't matter if you lose or he wins or I win. I just wanted to do the right things. If I'm doing the right things and he plays unbelievable match and he beat you, it's okay, but at least you did the right things.

I think today worked really well. I did everything they told me that I had to do, and it worked. It worked pretty well.

All that studying—which began (almost) immediately after Wimbledon—clearly paid off for the Spaniard, who served out a speedy four-set win of his own in Sunday’s championship match over Sinner, dethroning the defending champion and reclaiming the top spot in the ATP rankings.

“I just thought about the specific things I want to improve if I want to beat Jannik,” Alcaraz explained after clinching his sixth Grand Slam victory. “So, I just spent two weeks before Cincinnati just practicing specific some things about my game that I need or I felt like I need to improve if I want to beat Jannik.”

Alcaraz’s improvements seem to have had a similar effect on Sinner, who walked away from the defeat feeling too “predictable” for his longtime rival, who now leads their head-to-head by 10 wins to 5.

“My style, yeah, it's about the variety that I have in a match,” said Alcaraz. “I feel I can do everything on court, to be honest: slices, drop shots, topspin, flat.

“I had to work on that just not to make too many mistakes on the matches, so I just been working on that. Keeping that style, the variety, but at the same time being solid from the baseline that give me the opportunity to make the opponents in trouble.”

Sinner now has four months to study this loss before taking the court for the 2026 Australian Open; how might each rival’s analysis of the other affect “Sincaraz” clashes in the years to come?