Jannik Sinner battled past Grigor Dimitrov to set up a mouth-watering clash with Carlos Alcaraz at the 2023 China Open.
Carlos Alcaraz did his bit by beating Casper Ruud earlier in the day, and now Jannik Sinner has done his part, so we'll get the dream matchup between two of the most promising stars on the ATP Tour.
Sinner and Alcaraz have a growing rivalry with some amazing matches between the players in the past, and this one is shaping up to be a good one as well.
Part of that is the matchup is not being lopsided as Sinner has claimed wins over Alcaraz, some big ones as well. Both are playing at a really high level right now, even though Sinner had more issues in his match than Alcaraz. The Italian took an early break and held serve from there.
It was a pretty strong set of tennis from both players but Sinner was slightly better which allowed him to win 6-4. The second set was quite similar but then we got a crazy sequence of events that ultimately saw Dimitrov win the second set.
Sinner first had 40-0 on the serve of the Bulgarian but missed out on those chances only to get broken in the very next game. Dimitrov then served it out even though he faced break points in that game. It was just one of those sequences where Sinner's hitting got slightly erratic.
He was widely expected to snap back into a good rhythm in the next set and that largely happened quickly. He took an early 3-0 lead and it was relatively simple from that point on.
The final score was 6-4 3-6 6-2 for Sinner, who had a very solid performance from the Italian, who had 27 winners and only 13 unforced errors.
He also added one three aces, which is pretty fair, but he'll need a lot more of these things against Alcaraz in the next match.
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