Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz won the Cincinnati Masters 1,000 (United States) this Monday for the first time in his career due to the withdrawal of Italian Jannik Sinner, number 1 in the world and defending champion.
Sinner decided to retire with 23 minutes of the final played and with the score 5-0 against.
“I’m sorry Jannik,” Alcaraz wrote in the television camera after the final.
It had been exactly a month since Alcaraz and Sinner had faced each other in the Wimbledon final, won by the Italian. In fact, their three previous encounters this 2025 had been in finals: Rome and Roland Garros for Alcaraz and Wimbledon for Sinner.
Today, Sinner started the final by conceding his serve at love, an unusual start for him and which seemed to indicate that he hadn’t yet entered the match.
Sinner’s Surprising Withdrawal
But
Alcaraz again got to 0-40 in Sinner’s next service game and made it 3-0 on his third ‘break’ point.
Sinner seemed totally out of the final and was not seen interacting with his team to find solutions.
Carlos Alcaraz’s First Title in Cincinnati
Alcaraz adds the Cincinnati title to his trophy cabinet, his sixth of the year after having conquered Rotterdam, Monte Carlo, Rome, Roland Garros, Queen’s.
On his way to the title, Alcaraz defeated Bosnian Damir Dzumhur, Serbian Hamad Mededovic, Italian Luca Nardi, Russian Andrey Rublev, German Alexander Zverev, and Sinner.
It was the second time the Murcian player had played the Cincinnati final after losing the 2023 final to Serbian Novak Djokovic.
Alcaraz will reduce the distance that Sinner has over him at the top of the ATP ranking just before the start of the US Open, which the Italian also defends.
The defeat breaks a streak of 26 consecutive wins on Sinner’s fast court, something that only Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal had achieved before this century.
Alcaraz equals the number of trophies he won in 2023
Carlos Alcaraz Garfia, with his victory in the Cincinnati final, has already equaled the number of titles he won in 2023 – six – and the number of matches (54) he won in 2024.
It is worth highlighting the figures of the young tennis player from Murcia when we are still in August and he will still play the US Open, the fourth and last Grand Slam of the season, starting next week; the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, in November; and in between several more tournaments – surely the ATP 500 in Beijing and the Masters 1,000 in Shanghai and Paris-Bercy-.
His 54-6 record in this course, a 90% success rate, is the best average of his career at the highest level. Not surprisingly, since his professional debut in 2020, he has a record of 263-62, which represents an 80.9% of matches won.
