“All the cards on the table”: Sinner confirms Madrid was a question mark in his Roland-Garros plan
Jannik Sinner has confirmed that Madrid was not a sure thing on his original clay calendar. The decision to play was made in-season, with Roland-Garros in mind.
Jannik Sinner, Rome 2026 | © Foto FITP
Jannik Sinner has confirmed that Madrid was not on his original clay-court schedule, and that the decision to play it – and to eventually win it – was made in-season as part of a deliberate calibration toward Roland-Garros.
Speaking in Rome after his 6-2, 6-0 win over Alexei Popyrin on Monday, the world No. 1 was explicit about the calculus.
Sinner : “maximise my potential”
“We simply put all the cards on the table and thought about what was best to arrive in the best possible shape for Paris,” Sinner said. “There are always positives and negatives. When you play tournaments, the positive is that you have match rhythm. On the negative side, perhaps you could do a little more training. Sometimes you don’t know. We’re trying to maximise my potential. That’s the most important thing for me. Then we’ll see whether we made the right choice.”
The answer followed a question prompted by Sinner’s coach Simone Vagnozzi, who told reporters the day before that Madrid had originally been a question mark on the schedule and was added only because Sinner was feeling well and winning. Vagnozzi himself had said in Monaco that skipping the Monte-Carlo Open was never on the table, something that would have been plausible after the Sunshine Double.
“Look, the most important is the body when you play a lot of tournaments,” Sinner said, in addition, to Tennis Majors on Monday. “At a high level, if you’re not physically 100%, you don’t compete anymore, because everyone is playing so fast. You need to be very, very focused on the body.”
“At the same time, you still have time to practise. It depends on what time you play, or whether you have a day off. On a day off, you can try a couple of things, always trying to add something. I think there’s always time to improve.”
Now the. Career Golden Masters is achievable
Sinner has not lost a match since the Doha quarter-finals in February. He has won Indian Wells, Miami, Monte-Carlo and Madrid in a row, lifting his Masters 1000 winning streak to 30 — one short of Novak Djokovic’s all-time record of 31 — and has dropped only two sets across the run.
By winning Monte-Carlo this year, Sinner claimed one of the two Masters 1000 titles he was still missing from his career collection. Only Rome remains – and a title there would make him the second man in history, after Novak Djokovic, to complete the Career Golden Masters.
