Jannik Sinner of Italy lays on the court after defeating Daniil Medvedev of Russia in the men’s singles final at the Australian Open tennis championships at Melbourne Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Jannik Sinner rallied from two sets down to take the Australian Open final from Daniil Medvedev 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 on Sunday and clinch his first Grand Slam title.
The 22-year-old Sinner was playing in a major final for the first time and got there by ending Novak Djokovic’s long domination of the tournament in a semifinal upset.
He’s the first Italian to win the Australian Open title in what could be a generational shift in tennis.
For 2021 U.S. Open champion Medvedev, the loss was his fifth in six major finals. The third-seeded Medvedev set a record with his fourth five-set match of the tournament and time on court at a major in the Open era, his 24 hours and 17 minutes surpassing Carlos Alcaraz’s 23:40 at the 2022 U.S. Open.
Medvedev lost back-to-back finals here to Djokovic in 2021 and to Rafael Nadal — after holding a two-set lead — the following year. He won three five-set matches to reach the championship match this time and had two comebacks from two sets down. Sinner only dropped one set through six rounds — in a third-set tiebreaker against Djokovic — until he lost two straight to Medvedev.
It wasn’t until a break in the sixth game of the fifth set that he really had a full grip on his first Grand Slam title.
Medvedev started like a man who wanted to win quickly, after playing three five-set matches just to reach his sixth Grand Slam final.
In two of those — a second-round win over Emil Ruusuvuori that finished at almost 4 in the morning, and a 4-hour, 18-minute semifinal win over No. 6 Alexander Zverev — he had to come back from two sets down. Nobody had done that on the way to an Australian Open final since Pete Sampras in 1995.
The…
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