Zverev must not freeze if he is to defeat supreme Sinner in Australian Open final
Zverev must not freeze if he is to defeat supreme Sinner in Australian Open final
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Defending champion has navigated his way back to final but his rival has yet to show he can last distance on big stage. “I am not perfect, no?” said Jannik Sinner, the best tennis player in the world, during his post-match press conference late on Friday night. Sinner had just navigated his path back to the Australian Open final with another demonstration of his supreme mental toughness, recovering from a first-set deficit to ruthlessly defeat Ben Shelton, the 21st seed. Sinner maintains that there is more to come.
![[Jannik Sinner stretches to hit a shot]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/43e79e8443c1a38d3eebf5a2aa8ea6a22f812998/0_133_4000_2399/master/4000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
These are by far the best times of Sinner’s career so far, a period that has seen him finally break through at the biggest tournaments and firmly entrench himself at the top of his sport. Winning major titles is impressive enough, but the consistency he has established on a week to week basis has already separated him from many other champions.
These successes are all made even more interesting by the behind-the-scenes issues swirling in an unusually dramatic run to the final. Sinner played through health concerns in his fourth-round match against Holger Rune, then spent the final games of his win over Shelton cramping.
The most notable drama, however, is off the court. After Sinner was cleared of deliberate wrongdoing in his anti-doping case by an independent panel last August, the World Antidoping Agency (Wada) opted to appeal the verdict to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Wada is not contesting Sinner’s argument that the banned substance clostebol entered his system through contamination. Under their rules of strict liability, which places the athlete at blame for everything that enters their body, they believe Sinner still carried some degree of fault due to the presence of the substance in his body. CAS will decide.
