Jannik Sinner entered this month in Carlos Alcaraz’s shadow, but an immaculate March pulled him out of it

“Serving performance, it helped,” Jannik Sinner said with a half-smile after his 6-4, 6-4 win over Jiri Lehecka in the Miami Open final on Sunday.

Sinner knew there was a Captain Obvious quality to this statement. He hit 10 aces, won 92 percent of his first-serve points, and wasn’t broken. That tends to help.

Most important, perhaps, when he faced his one moment of danger, he didn’t need to do anything other than use his serve to get out of it. Up an early break in the first set, Sinner experienced a brief and unexpected lapse, going down 0-40. Then he calmly turned around and smacked five straight unreturnable serves—two aces and three service winners. Any thought that Sinner might succumb to final-round nerves, or stumble at the Sunshine Double finish line, was quickly dismissed.

Read more: Jannik Sinner becomes first tennis player ever to win Sunshine Double without losing a set

That hold from 0-40 was a fitting way for Sinner to cap his immaculate March. He won 12 straight matches and 24 straight sets, to become the first man since Roger Federer in 2017 to win Indian Wells and Miami back to back. Most impressive—uncanny, really—was his ability to be flawless when he had to be.

Against Daniil Medevev in the Indian Wells final, Sinner lost the first four points of the second-set tiebreaker, and appeared to cramp. Needing the match to be over immediately, he stopped missing, and reeled off seven straight points for the title. Against Alex Michelsen in Miami, Sinner went down a break in the second set, and a mini-break in the tiebreaker; again, both times, he cut out all errors. Finally, against Lehecka, when he needed his serve to bail him out, it was there.

“It was for sure a key moment, holding,” Sinner said. “The conditions were very heavy, so I tried to toss the ball a little bit more in front to get a little bit more whip.

“Having a good rhythm on serve, that helped me for sure.”

We’ve talked a lot since last summer about Sinner’s determination to add variety to his baseline game, in order to stay with Carlos Alcaraz. What has gone under the radar, at least until now, is how he has improved his serve. He made some tweaks to to his toss in the off-season, and has begun to put up serve-bot numbers since. For the year, he has won 92 percent of his service games—tops on tour—and nearly 80 percent of his first-serve points.

I want to finish my career saying that I did everything possible. Jannik Sinner

Sinner has been No. 1 or No. 2 for going on three years, but he doesn’t subscribe to the old axiom, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” He credits his coaches with pushing him to find any room for improvements, no matter how miniscule they may seem.

“Being young and winning big titles, and then to change, you have to be quite open,” he said. “I want to finish my career saying that I did everything possible. To do that, you need to have a very honest team behind you.

“A lot of practice sessions, a lot of long hours, but I’m very happy with the result.”

Alcaraz made the opening salvo of 2026, when he won the Australian Open and his first 16 matches. Now Sinner has returned fire with the Sunshine Double, something neither of them had pulled off before. He won in the California desert and Florida humidity. He beat 12 different opponents without surrendering a set. His better-than-ever serve also helped him survive the heat that has led him to cramp in the past.

“Physically, I felt really good, it has been something we worked on a lot,” he said. “Getting some free points [with my serve], it also helps physically.”

Sinner credited his own even-keel attitude toward his early-season results. When he lost to Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open semis, and didn’t win a title for the first two months of the year, he didn’t panic.

“When I lose I also don’t want to put myself under the bus, because that wouldn’t be fair to me,” he said. “I’m just trying to be honest with me, semifinals of a Grand Slam is a great result.”

Sinner came into the Sunshine Swing in Alcaraz’s shadow. He leaves it riding his own winning streak. He knows not to get too low after a defeat, or too high after a victory. As April begins, that leaves the Italian right where he belongs: Back at center stage, ready to enter the red-clay ring again with his great rival.