Jannik Sinner vs. Carlos Alcaraz: Where To Watch, Cincinnati Open Preview

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Estimated start time: 3:00 p.m. ET, Monday, August 18

“We played recently,” Jannik Sinner said when he was asked about the prospect of facing Carlos Alcaraz in the Cincinnati Open final.

You don’t say?

Indeed, Jannik, we watched the finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, as well as the one in Rome. And we’ll be happy to see you guys tee it up again in Cincinnati on Monday.

These guys both know how much their still-budding rivalry means to the game and its fans.

“Hopefully it’s a very high level match,” Sinner said here on Saturday. “For us players, it’s important, but also for the people who are watching, you know, hopefully it’s going to be a good match.”

Alcaraz, as “a huge fan of tennis,” echoed that sentiment.

“I think when two good players playing at [their] best level always,” he said, “I think that the level of tennis really high for the fans to watch it.”

You never know when any two players will produce a classic. The Sinner-Alcaraz Roland Garros final from two months ago was one of the best matches of all time, but their clash in Rome was pretty one-sided in Alcaraz’s direction, and their Wimbledon final never quite caught fire.

Still, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be ready to play their best in Cincy. Each won his semi in straight sets and mostly looked sharp. While it will be close to 90 degrees again in suburban Ohio on Monday afternoon, they should be used to that by now, and each will have had a day off on Sunday. They’ve played one hard-court final before, in Beijing last fall, and it went to a third-set tiebreaker.

“I’m excited about it,” Alcaraz says. “It’s gonna be great. He won the last one. I won the first two, two finals [of 2025]. So I think it’s gonna be really interesting.”

There are reasons to believe that each one will have the edge.

For Alcaraz, the most obvious reason is their head-to-head. He leads it 8-5, and before his loss at Wimbledon, he had won five in a row. While Sinner dominates on hard courts against everyone else, Alcaraz is 5-2 against him on the surface.

Sinner, put simply, brings out the best in Alcaraz. The Spaniard has the highest ceiling of anyone when it comes to speed, power, and athleticism—few, if any, players in the game’s history have been as electric. But he doesn’t typically bring a total focus, or stay at his best, for the length of a match. Against Sinner, though, he tends to dial in and find a way to reach his top level by the end. We saw it last fall in Beijing, and at Roland Garros, when he ran away with the final-set tiebreakers.

Sinner has the edge in overall consistency from one match and tournament to the next, and his ability—Roland Garros notwithstanding—to win the big ones. That’s why he has been No. 1 for the last 62 weeks. He’s 20-7 in finals, 17-5 on hard courts, and he’s won the last three Grand Slams played on that surface. He’s also the defending champion in Cincinnati, a tournament Alcaraz has yet to win. Sinner’s game requires precision, but he has shown an ability to sustain his best, over a longer period of time, than Alcaraz.

Neither has been perfect in Cincy. Sinner looked winded at times in his semifinal with Terence Atmane, while Alcaraz has been prone, as always, to peaks and valleys. Alcaraz says he’s going to watch the Wimbledon final again and “see what I have to do different.”

In that match, it was Sinner who took Alcaraz’s best in the early going, and raised his level beyond it. It was Sinner who hit more winners, who came to net twice as often, who was superior in the front court and the back court.

“At some points I didn’t know what I had to do in the match because from the baseline I was feeling he was better than me, and I couldn’t do anything about it,” Alcaraz said after his Wimbledon loss.

“I think the big key was the second serve. He was returning really well the second serve. Thanks to that, he was in the position to attack the second ball every time.”

Judging by that analysis, we might expect Alcaraz to take the initiative as early as possible on Monday, to get to the net more often, to disrupt Sinner with drop shots, to add a little pace to his second serve, or try to make more first serves.

“Just to be ready and to be perfect,” is how Alcaraz described what he’s aiming for on Monday.

He may succeed; he has proven in the past that he can reach a level against Sinner that he doesn’t typically reach against anyone else. But perfection is a high bar. I’d say the percentages are still with the
percentage player.

Winner: Sinner