Stefanos Tsitsipas has been having rather a nice time this past week. As the high and mighty fell around him at the Australian Open, the third seed sauntered through the draw, dropping not a single set in the first three rounds and spending less time on the court than Andy Murray did in a single match.
With Carlos Alcaraz absent and both Rafael Nadal and Casper Ruud knocked out, Tsitsipas is now the highest-ranked men’s player still standing. Novak Djokovic aside, he is also the only one to have made a grand slam final.
Amid all the upsets and changing of the guard at this event, it feels almost humdrum that Tsitsipas has progressed to the second week. The 24-year-old, who has made the semi-finals here in three of the past four years, had not been tested by any of the unseeded opponents in his path – until he met Jannik Sinner.
The Italian 15th seed is the definition of a talent on the rise. Last year he was barely 21 when he made the quarter-finals of every major except Roland-Garros, where he fell in the fourth round. And on Rod Laver Arena on Sunday night he made Tsitsipas think, presenting him with problems to solve and pouncing when he failed to find an answer Sinner came back from two sets down only to ultimately succumb 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 6-3.
Tsitsipas, now with eight wins from eight this year, will face Czech Jiří Lehečka in the quarter-finals on Tuesday.
“It was a long match, guys,” Tsitsipas said. “I felt like I spent an entire century on this court playing tennis. It felt so long. It’s not easy, you know. I had [an] unbelievable opponent on the other side of the court playing incredible tennis in the third and fourth set.
“I stayed really calm, just like Mr Rod Laver used to do in his day. I feel my face burn from the effort … I may need to jump in the Yarra River.”
The primary question before this contest was whether Sinner could overcome the psychological barrier of having lost four of his five previous matches against his aggressor, including a straight-sets defeat in the 2022 Australian Open quarter-finals. And Tsitsipas is an aggressor, with his preference for taking the ball on the rise and deploying a versatile repertoire of shots.
Twelve months later, for the first hour and a half, Sinner appeared destined for the same fate. Yet though the scoreboard always had him a half-step behind, the human behind the numbers appeared unperturbed. In each of the opening two sets he forced Tsitsipas to break him twice before surrendering, and all the way through made his opponent fight to hold serve. By the end of the match Tsitsipas had faced 26 break points but only ceded four.
By the time the third set commenced Sinner had absorbed an immense amount of pressure, offsetting the serve-volley game coming at him with fluid baseline movement befitting his previous life as a top junior skier, and cleverly feigning big forehands before placing delicate drop shots.
Sinner’s main problem was Tsitsipas’s second serve, prompting his team to direct him to receive from well beyond the baseline. The tweak gave him more time and allowed new depth in return, forcing Tsitsipas to save two set points on serve and survive, only for Sinner to serve out the set with three aces.
If there was any doubt the comeback was on, it was put to bed early in the fourth, when Tsitsipas ran to the other side of the court for advice from his coaching team, which now also features Mark Philippoussis alongside Tsitsipas’s father Apostolos. He also made it clear he needed the crowd to help him, and they duly obliged. He has adoring supporters in Melbourne’s Greek community, who again came with their flags and enthusiasm.
Tsitsipas, always ready for a joke, really has seemingly turned Australian this tournament, peppering his post-match interviews with “Yeah, crikey, that was a ripsnorter, mate” and “Fair crack of the whip, mate” while hinting at not-too-distant plans to move down under.
Leading 2-1 in the fifth set, Tsitsipas had Sinner at 0-40, only to lose five consecutive points and the game. Two games later he fashioned another 0-40 opportunity, losing the next two points before finally converting. That moment, and the sudden re-emergence of his first serve – he landed 24 of 26 attempts in the final set – sealed the result just as the clock reached four hours on the dot.
“I think that I just released my arm a little bit, released my wrist on the serve,” he said. “That helped me a lot to generate more power and accuracy, something that I wasn’t doing before. It completely changed the way I approached this match.”
Then he added another “ripper” for good measure, told the crowd “we are out here doing this together” and handed-out his pre-signed self-portraits to fans on his departure.