How Jannik Sinner climbed the clay-court mountain

On the first day of Roland Garros, the homepage of the ATP Tour website featured a close-up of Jannik Sinner laying wood (OK, graphite) to a forehand in one of his first practice sessions at Stade Roland Garros. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt, with a small, black Nike swoosh icon on the chest and simple black lettering spelling out, "Winning Starts With Training."

Gee, thanks, coach. But think about it: The T-shirt ticks none of the usual branding boxes. It isn’t clever, catchy, inspirational, interesting, or provocative. Don’t for a moment think that the design was chosen without intention. True, the message is an almost embarrassing truism. But it offers us—absolutely free—the key to the genius of the No. 1 ranked player in the world. The facility, or talent, or discipline—or whatever it is—hiding in plain sight.

Sinner now stands astride pro tennis, albeit with his main rival Carlos Alcaraz temporarily sidelined. When he won the Internazionali BNL d'Italia a few weeks ago, Sinner joined Rafael Nadal as the only player to have swept all three spring Masters 1000 titles. Given Sinner's recent record, that may have seemed like business as usual. It was anything but, for reasons hinted at by a T-shirt bearing a message as familiar, and easy to ignore, as a government warning label.

Sinner earned his first title on clay at the entry level M25 event in early 2019 at Santa Margherita Di Pula, when his world ranking was No. 322. It would be his only win on clay until Sinner earned his first ATP tour-level title three years later, at the bottom-tier ATP 250 in Umag, Croatia (In a delicious irony, the beaten finalist was the top seed, a youngster named Alcaraz). Sinner would not win another clay event until this year.

The following spring, Sinner took Masters 1000 and Roland Garros losses to Holger Rune (Monte Carlo, semifinals), Franciso Cerundolo (Rome, fourth round), and Daniel Altmaier (Roland Garros, second round). In 2024, Sinner was beaten by Stefanos Tsitsipas (Monte Carlo semifinals), and a hip injury forced him to give Felix Auger-Aliassime a walkover in the Madrid quarterfinals. Alcaraz then got the better of Sinner in the Roland Garros semifinals.

Last year, a doping suspension caused Sinner to miss all of the clay season until his return at Rome, where he was foiled by Alcaraz, who also prevailed over Sinner in that epic Roland Garros final. Thus, it was hardly surprising when, this April, Sinner told reporters at Monte Carlo,  “I never won anything big on this surface. So, I'm looking forward to it, trying to put myself in the position hopefully, and then we'll see.”

We saw. The absence of Alcaraz has undeniably played a role in the clay events this year. But the catalyst for Sinner’s spectacular success on clay was, ironically, the doping suspension of 2025. Despite the threat to Sinner’s ranking, confidence, and reputation, the break enabled him to focus on his clay-specific training for his return at his home championships in Rome. Although he was beaten in the final by Alcaraz, Sinner considered the tournament a success and did not want to “underrate” the runner-up performance.

“It was my first big final on clay,” he said. “We worked a lot for that.”

With few exceptions, elite pros train hard. They pursue ways to get better. It is the way they pass their days, what they do for work. For Sinner, though, training and practice seem to hold near religious significance. For him, matches provide a roadmap for training. It’s one of the reasons he is curiously philosophical about the few losses he does suffer. They provide mental and emotional fuel for meeting the rigors and daily grind of training.

During his pre-Roland Garros meeting with reporters last year, Sinner explained that what he missed most during his three-month suspension was getting the “feedback” provided by live-fire situations.  “I didn't know exactly how I was playing, if the shots were on the right pace or not, if I'm moving well or not, many things," he said.

The solution his team hit on was to take one of his first matches from Monte Carlo in 2024, because Monte Carlo is the first clay tournament he plays, and then compare the statistics with his performance in Rome when the suspension was lifted. Sinner said it gave them “a big picture” template for what he needed to do.

You can often detect the reverence in which Sinner holds training when he provides his round-by-round post-mortems at tournaments.  Before his epic run on clay began this year, he told reporters in Monte Carlo, “[clay] is different, but we have been working not only the last couple of months, but already for years now, trying to find the best possible movement for myself."

Years, that was. A revelation delivered with ho-hum nonchalance. Just like when Sinner said, in the triumphal press conference following his revenge win over rival Carlos Alcaraz at Wimbledon last year.

“I keep looking up to Carlos because even today I felt like he was doing a couple of things better than I did," he said. "So that's something where we will work on and prepare ourselves because he's going to come for us again.” Or take his comment during a press conference at the last Cincinnati Open: “I take my confidence from training, not tournaments.”

This near-obsession with the "three Ps"—preparation, practice, perfection—have shaped Sinner’s game to the point where, at the moment, he looks virtually unbeatable.

Analysts far and wide routinely remark upon the versatility he has introduced to his formerly devastating bread-and-butter baseline game. After Sinner lost the US Open final to Alcaraz last September, he delivered an unflinching critique of himself to a room bulging with reporters.  He said: “You arrive to a point when you play against Carlos where you have to go out of your comfort zone. So I'm going to aim to, you know, [do that]. . Maybe even lose some matches from now on, but trying to do some changes, you know, trying to be a bit more unpredictable as a player.”

I take my confidence from training, not tournaments. Jannik Sinner

This ferociously honest dedication to his craft has been shaping Sinner’s personality. It has also shaped his image, and not always in a flattering way. Rivals, pundits and fans frequently use the word “robotic” to describe his shutdown game, some even apply it to his  undemonstrative demeanor. Sinner, who is known to complain about as often as he goes on a three-day bender, has said, “I feel like the fans don't know how I am as a person [because] I'm very serious on the court.”

There is another side, of course. It bubbled up to the fore recently in Rome, after Sinner became the first Italian man to win his national championship in 50 years. He made his winner’s speech slowly, looking here and there, a sly smile playing on his lips, a mischievous expression on his boyish face. He was respectful of all the dignitaries,, but it also seemed as if he were enjoying an inside joke.

Sinner opened up to the Tennis Channel’s interviewer Prakash Amritraj immediately after the trophy presentation ceremony. Still standing on the court, Sinner said of his home court breakthrough.

“I  cannot compare this to any other tournament," he said. "There is here that extra pressure, extra hunger and the feeling [desire] to play the best possible tennis. The whole tournament was very challenging, but also so beautiful at the same time. So I just love this tournament. It has so much more history [for Italians] than the ATP Finals in Turin," an event Sinner also won on home soil.

Perhaps the words printed on that plain white T-shirt that Sinner wore a few days later were that inside joke.