Player Spotlight: Jannik Sinner

Range—groundstroke fundamentals—weight transfer

Last week I wrote about Carlos Alcaraz, the young Spanish phenom smashing records and rocketing up the ranking chart with every passing week. Along with Alcaraz, there is one other young player who I believe has the tools and foundations to be a future multi-slam winner: Jannik Sinner. Only 20-years-old (he’s nearly two years older than Alcaraz) Sinner has made a name for himself as one of the hardest hitters on tour, and so far it’s paying dividends, notching five titles from six finals, a top-10 ranking, and bagging six top-10 wins. He has started this year 14-2 as I write this, and next takes on Nick Kyrgios in the fourth round in Miami. A look at last year’s Miami event—where Sinner reached the final—showed that the hard-hitting reputation was well-earned.

Sinner’s average groundstroke speeds were the fastest on tour at last year’s Miami Open. On top of his backhand speed, Sinner’s backhand topspin is also elite, making it the heaviest backhand in tennis.

Sinner’s junior development was unusual for an elite player. Whereas most players have a history of early adoption and specialization, Sinner’s junior days were initially focused on skiing and football, as described on his Wikipedia page (emphasis added)¹:

“He was one of Italy's top junior skiers from eight to twelve years old, winning a national championship in giant slalom at age eight and earning a national runner-up at age twelve. While training in skiing, Sinner gave up tennis for a year at age seven before his father pushed him to return to the sport. When he resumed playing, he began working with Heribert Mayr as his first regular coach. Nonetheless, tennis was still only his third priority behind skiing and football…At age thirteen, Sinner decided to give up skiing and football in favor of tennis…Before Sinner began training in tennis full-time with Piatti, he had been playing only twice a week.”

The rest of his junior career and initial transition to the pros was just as underwhelming. Sinner played very few junior ITF’s and wasn’t even ranked highly enough to enter junior Grand Slams. However, he very quickly started making inroads at the Challenger level, and his progression through the pro ranks has been ridiculously fast. A look at his year-on-year ranking movement:

To rise so rapidly on the back of a junior career that—by comparison with typical top players—involved relatively few days of training and tournaments, goes against a lot of the established doctrine of early specialization and grinding hours, and is more in line with Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. As I wrote previously in Death of a Forehand - Part II:

In a nutshell, Range argues that being a generalist and sampling in your youth leads to better performance later in the domain you choose to pursue more seriously. By trying different sports or studying multiple subjects, a person can make connections between disparate fields.

Sinner’s early focus on skiing and soccer may have paid unforeseen dividends to his later tennis career. Watching him play, it’s hard not to compare his lateral baseline movement with Novak Djokovic, who himself was a very good junior skier. Numerous top players have also dabbled in football as juniors, and it’s hard not to imagine the coordination and leg strength required for football would be beneficial on the tennis court. Regardless of Sinner’s other sporting pursuits, one thing I love about the young Italian is his technique off the ground.

Forehand

Sinner’s forehand is good without being great. As I have advocated for previously, Sinner starts his forehand swing with a move I believe is helpful for returning serves and handling pace, which is a setting of the wrist with extension at the initial set-up (as seen in the screenshot of the video below from both Djokovic and Sinner). However, what we see from Sinner’s forehand in the video below is that unlike Djokovic, Sinner doesn’t use gravity to generate racquet head speed. Instead, he sets the racquet tip lower and ‘inverts’ (i.e., points the tip more toward the opponent) the racquet head so that it moves through a longer path to contact which increases lag, something that has become fashionable with a lot of forehands in the last ten years. As the video highlights, I am more a fan of the modern Djokovic set-up that utilizes gravity to generate controllable power. I believe Sinner’s forehand is harder to time compared to Djokovic for the simple reason that his swing path has more ‘noise’ compared to that of Novak’s. In saying that, along with Sinner’s wrist extension, he does an excellent job getting on his front foot when hitting forehands. This does two things that I like. Firstly, a front foot shot gets the hips side-on so that they are aligned ‘down’ the court which means his racquet will naturally follow a path down the court as well, rather than across his body. This allows the racquet head to travel ‘through’ the ball, helping him with timing and plow through. Secondly, by getting on the front foot, you utilize all your weight, enabling you to hit the ball harder. For a stringy-looking player, Sinner’s crushing speed is primarily because of his ability to commit to the front foot forehand far more often than other players. It’s reminiscent of Agassi in his commitment to this early hitting style.

Backhand

Sinner’s backhand is world-class. There’s not a lot I’ll say on it other than highlight the reason why he has so much power and spin from that side. If you check out the video below around the 25-second mark, we see Sinner’s backhand right before he will start to pull the racquet through to contact. The amount of ‘drop’ sinner gets—where it falls into a slot along his left leg—means that Sinner is going to get a lot of control on this ball by virtue of the topspin. The greater the drop, the more spin and power you can get as your racquet will be traveling faster and from underneath the ball.

It’s the same reason Gasquet generates obscene topspin and pace on his one-hand backhand.

Anytime a racquet-head drops several feet before being pulled through, it’s going to generate a huge amount of racquet-head speed. All things being equal, the faster you get that racquet moving, the more spin and power you’re going to tap into. Of course, using gravity like the Djokovic forehand or Gasquet backhand also means you can wield an absolute sledgehammer of a frame, which also adds power and control. It’s not surprising to me that Gasquet’s reported racquet swingweight is 381, and Djokovic’s is 370, despite neither possessing Rafa-esque python arms.

Sinner still has some improvements to make before he becomes a consistent slam threat. His serve is a work in progress as he tinkers with a platform stance, his volleys and slice are under-developed, and he doesn’t mix up the pace of his ball very often. Compared to Alcaraz he seems far more one-dimensional, but the dimension he excels in, the bread-and-butter forehands and backhands, are world-class, and I think he is going to entrench himself firmly in the top-10 this year. His statistics on the ATP 52-week return rating put him in elite company.

Men’s tennis has been dominated by the return ability in recent decades. SRPW=Service Return Points Won. RGW=Return Games Won. BPC=Break Points Converted.

Tomorrow’s test against Kyrgios should be a great match. If Sinner can find his timing on the forehand wing, he will put Kyrgios under immense pressure from the back of the court.

1. From his Wikipedia page