Back in the day, like in the biblical day, terrible meant something a little different than it does now. It meant frightening.
And if you're Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, you are probably quite frightened right now.
Let's start with Sabalenka and her No. 2, Coco Gauff. Having dispatched French Open's reigning queen Iga Swiatek, it's fair to assume that she may have figured the title was hers. Hell, she had a harder draw too, for the best player in the world, especially compared to Gauff. The problem is that you still have to play the match. Full disclosure: I was out playing tennis and only caught the tail end of the match at first. I saw Sabalenka's comments first before seeing the rest of the match and I thought, "How awful can she have played with a scoreline like that??" Then I saw the match and I was really confused. I mean I know she's not going to forget about that easy volley she netted deep in the first set, but she did win that set, so ... But otherwise, they obviously played a competitive match. So, the comments. Why, though.
Fun fact: I just went to Google Sabalenka's draw and as I typed in her name, the first thing that autopopulated was 'sabalenka sore loser.' Yikeys. Which brings me to the second level to these comments. It is one thing to be hard on yourself in the aftermath of a hard-fought match, but then Sabalenka said that if Iga had played the Coco, Iga would have won. Which is ... like, why?!?? That is petty af and not even based on reality because Coco beat her easily on clay, like, last month. (OK, their head-to-head is a little lopsided on Swiatek's end but still.) Also, bro, how are you going to say out loud that your opponent was framing balls and they were staying in? That is basically saying she got lucky.
One could argue that when you say things like that, it might be because you're scared.
Speaking of frightening, I couldn't watch the whole men's match right away on Sunday but was following it online. Not gonna lie, I thought it was going to be a Sinner wipeout. Talk about scary? His form for this whole tournament was absolutely terrifying. He actually had me feeling sorry for Novak Djokovic, which is no easy task. In fact, it would be the first time I've ever felt sorry for him.
Anyway, Carlos Alcaraz was down two sets before he decided to play some of the best tennis I've ever seen from him. My thing with Alcaraz has been that he has gotten into heavy moments in matches and just lost focus a bit. Even in the deeps of this match, I thought it would happen again. But match point was the perfect example of how he played the whole match. You're trying to win a match in a fifth-set tiebreak, right? So you go to the high-percentage shot, into midcourt, right? No, you scream a winner down the line, which was low-percentage, ballsy and confident! I love the showman Alcaraz, but sometimes I think he gets a bit too much into his options. That final showed that he is capable of locking in and staying there.
As for Sinner, it was hard to see where he went wrong. It's not like he gave the match away, but he did look a little tired there at the end which is sort of unacceptable after a five-and-a-half-hour match. I kid. It's good to see Sinner get a bit of a scare in him. He probably doesn't feel that way, but
