TENNIS – CARLOS Alcaraz won the Cincinnati Open title in a little more than 20 minutes yesterday after top-ranked Jannik Sinner was forced to retire because of illness during the first set.
Meeting in the final for the fourth time this year and first since Wimbledon, Sinner fell behind 5-0 in the first set with nine unforced errors. He was seen with an icepack on his head during a break and retired after playing just 22 minutes.
Sinner was struggling badly in sweltering conditions and as he sat down after losing his serve for a third time in a row, he admitted defeat. “I tried, I can’t,” he said to medical staff who had come on to treat him.
“I feel so sorry for the fans,” Sinner said as he fought back tears.
“From yesterday, I didn’t feel great,” he explained in his on-court interview. “I felt that I would improve during the match, but it came out worse. Super sorry to disappoint you (the fans). I tried to come out, trying to make it at least a small match, but I couldn’t handle more, so I’m very, very sorry for all of you. I know that maybe some of you on Monday, they had to work, they had to do something else. So I’m really, really sorry.”
Sinner, who turned 24 on Saturday, was on 12-match winning streak and had won 26 straight matches on hard courts. He was bidding to become the first player to win back-to-back men’s Cincinnati Open titles since Roger Federer in 2014 and ‘15.
Alcaraz, who is ranked No. 2, now holds a 9-5 advantage in his matchups with the Italian.
Sinner won in four sets at Wimbledon while the Spaniard won a five-set thriller at the French Open and in straight sets in the Rome Masters in May.
It was only the third time the top two men’s players have met in the Cincinnati Open final, the last being number two Novak Djokovic and number one Alcaraz in 2022 and number one Federer and number two Djokovic in 2012.
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