Jannik Sinner is one of the top Australian Open favorites in 2024, and he started his campaign with an impressive win over Botic van de Zandschulp.
In some pre-tournament predictions, the Italian was put on par with Novak Djokovic, which is just crazy, considering the Serb is going for his 11th title in Melbourne and his 25th Grand Slam overall, while Sinner is yet to win one.
However, the 22-year-old's form at the end of the last ATP season, and the fact that he beat Djokovic twice in a span of a few days, and even bested him in doubles, says a lot about how good Sinner has been recently.
As the fourth seed at the tournament, he started against an unseeded van de Zandschulp, but the Dutch player knows how it is to be seeded at the Grand Slam, as he's been ranked higher in the ATP Rankings before, so he certainly presented a threat.
Sinner, on the other hand, was one of the players who opted not to play any official warm-up tournaments before the Australian Open, and it seems that this move didn't hinder the young Italian in any way.
The fourth seed opened the match as good as he could have hoped, breaking his opponent's serve immediately in the first game, but he faced two break points himself after that.
But Sinner saved both and comfortably cruised to a first-set win, 6-4. In the second set of the match, both players were solid on their serve, and fans at the Rod Laver Arena were getting ready for a tie-break in the first match of this year's event played on the stadium.
However, in the eleventh game, the 22-year-old stepped up on the return, breaking his opponent's serve and winning the second set 7-5 to now increase his lead to 2-0.
After very calm first two sets, the third one was really crazy. First, Sinner had four break points in the first set, which he didn't use, then, his opponent immediately broke him, before the Italian broke back and added yet another break.
Yet, he then faced three break points himself, but saved them all before having the same done to him with two break points in the following game. One of the players had break points in almost every game, except for two, and there was a lot of returning masterclass, but also struggling on the serve.
Still, the result of this break point show was Sinner's win as he got better off his opponent to win the match 6-4, 7-5, 6-3 and advance into the second round of the 2024 Australian Open, awaiting the winner of the match between qualifier Jesper De Jong an Pedro Cachin.
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