‘Borderline too much’: Why the French Open final is a turning point for men’s tennis

Follow live coverage of the 2024 French Open final today.

Last Thursday night at Roland Garros in Paris, Stefanos Tsitsipas was angry. The ninth seed at the French Open had heard a loud noise, and he didn’t like it.

“Before, it was manageable, but that last forehand… It was a little bit borderline too much, you know.”

He was talking about a grunt from Carlos Alcaraz, the third seed, who was beating him 6-3, 6-6 (5-1) in a tiebreak, and match, that the Spaniard would go on to win.

All grunts aside, the idea of Alcaraz being “a little bit borderline too much” could work on a few levels. He could easily have been talking about every other time he has played Alcaraz, who has a 6-0 head-to-head record against the 25-year-old Greek. He could easily have been talking about everything that Alcaraz, the 21-year-old who is already a former world No 1, has done to men’s tennis since winning his first Grand Slam title at the 2022 US Open, and a second at last year’s Wimbledon.

Before, it was manageable. That last 21 months? Borderline too much, you know.

As Tsitsipas’ contemporary, the 27-year-old German Alexander Zverev, faces Alcaraz in the French Open final on Sunday, he is likely having the same thought.

This French Open, on the men’s side, was supposed to be wide open. The 14-time champion Rafael Nadal was no longer invincible on Court Philippe-Chatrier; Novak Djokovic was out of form; Alcaraz had missed three tournaments with a forearm injury and his brother in generational disruption, Jannik Sinner, was struggling with this hip. This was supposed to be an opportunity for the generation of men’s players — chiefly Tsitsipas, Zverev and Andrey Rublev; at either end, Casper Ruud and Grigor Dimitrov — who had their hopes of winning a Grand Slam extinguished by setting it alight in front of Roger Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic, to make a statement.

It didn’t quite turn out that way. Djokovic experienced yet another resurrection in the face of playing a tournament he truly wants to win, ended only by a slip — and later surgery — against Argentine Francisco Cerundolo, who he beat in five sets with a torn meniscus. Alcaraz and Sinner played their way into the tournament and then started their customary obliterations, the Spaniard taking out Tsitsipas and Sinner, world No 1 in waiting, dispatching Dimitrov. Rublev exited in a whirl of smashed rackets and anguish. Ruud met Zverev and was felled by stomach cramps; Alcaraz and Sinner met each other, as they have so often done and will do so many times more, in a jittery seesaw of a semi-final that underlined why, instead of being the free shot that it appeared, this French Open final is an inflection point for men’s tennis.

GO DEEPER

Alcaraz and Sinner were the future of men’s tennis. Now, they are its present

If Alcaraz wins, he will have won three Grand Slams at the age of 21, on three different surfaces, while Sinner holds the other — the Australian Open he won in January this year.

Since the 2005 final here at Roland Garros, when a 19-year-old Nadal collapsed into the dirt that would streak his back 13 times more in 19 years, 74 Grand Slam men’s finals have been played, with 11 different winners: Nadal; Federer; Djokovic; Andy Murray; Stan Wawrinka; Marin Cilic; Juan Martin del Potro; Dominic Thiem; Daniil Medvedev; Alcaraz, and Sinner.

Zverev, Tsitsipas and their generation have spent close to a decade in the shadow of three of the greatest men’s players of all time; they are now on the precipice of watching two players who look ready to follow in their footsteps streak off into the distance. Both of them have come close to a title: Tsitsipas had a two-set lead over Novak Djokovic at the 2021 French Open, after he knocked out Zverev in the semi-final; Zverev had a two-set lead over Thiem in the excruciating void of that 2020 US Open final, when nerves and the weight of history resounded in the near-silence of an empty stadium.

Zverev has since said that he “wasn’t ready” to win a Grand Slam title then, that he wasn’t mature enough to cope. He says he is ready now, believing that he has certainty in his tennis and his life, having settled his domestic abuse case the day of his semi-final win over Ruud on Friday. The Berlin court that heard the case delivered no verdict — Zverev is neither guilty nor innocent of the charges he has denied since they were brought — but in his mind he is. “That means innocence,” he said in a spiky press conference that Friday night.

He leads the head-to-head with Alcaraz 5-4, and won their only previous meeting at Roland Garros in 2022, but that was sandwiched by two chastening thrashings in Madrid on the same surface. In Grand Slam finals, Zverev is zero from one, and Alcaraz is two from two, the latter the seminal defeat of Djokovic in last year’s Wimbledon final.

GO DEEPER

How Carlos Alcaraz tamed ‘lion’ Novak Djokovic to be crowned Wimbledon champion

There are plenty of unknowns. When will Djokovic return from surgery, and what will that recovery look like for his level of tennis? Will Alcaraz or any other player suffer the misfortune that Zverev did when he tore ankle ligaments in the semifinal against Nadal in Paris two years ago, in a tight match that he looked capable of winning? Will a new player emerge to challenge them all?

Alcaraz came through his semifinal against Jannik Sinner in impressive fashion. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

Something not unknown is that in tennis, the psychological reserves of winning and losing are both vital resources and albatrosses, capable of derailing a player or propelling them to victory. When Tsitsipas complained about Alcaraz’s grunt on Thursday night, he was complaining about the grunt, but he was complaining about something else too: the taking of destiny, the being left behind, the pain of being heralded as “the future of men’s tennis” and seeing that future partly stolen from him by a precocious showman with shotmaking from another world, who had all the gifts he did but more of the tools to unwrap them.

This is what Zverev faces on Sunday: the pressure of a first Grand Slam, and a possible turning point where being manacled by the weight of history turns into being left behind by the future.

Borderline too much, you know.

(Top photos: Bertrand Guay / AFP; Patrick Smith via Getty Images)