“All shots I can do better”: Sinner is far from his best at Wimbledon, and that is precisely the plan
Jannik Sinner moved into the Wimbledon third round, defeating Nuno Borges in straight sets. After a dramatic opener with falls, the world No. 1 reported no lingering issues, expressing satisfaction with his improved performance and now focusing on sharpening his game.
Jannik Sinner, Wimbledon 2026 | © Photos News /PsNewz
Jannik Sinner reached the third round at Wimbledon on Wednesday without playing his best tennis, and, in his own telling, without particularly trying to. The defending champion beat Portugal’s Nuno Borges 7-6, 7-6, 6-4 in a serve-dominated contest, then spoke like a man building towards something rather than a man who had arrived. “Second match on grass, I was not looking for perfection,” he said. “I feel like all shots I can do slightly better.”
It is an unusual thing for a world No. 1 to volunteer, but it fits a pattern. Two days on from an opener defined by two alarming falls and a bloodied foot, Sinner was calmer, cleaner and entirely unbothered by the gaps in his game. He rattled through a list of things to sharpen – coming to the net, aggression, movement, the second-serve return – and framed every one as a work in progress rather than a worry. “It was a better performance than in the first match,” he said. “Hopefully it comes match by match, then we see.”
The numbers underlined how much room there is at the top of his game, and how little at the bottom. Sinner landed 67 per cent of his first serves and won 82 per cent of the points behind them, adding 58 per cent on his second – a platform solid enough to yield 22 aces and leave 40 per cent of his deliveries unreturned.
That he did all this while spraying 29 unforced errors only sharpened the point: the serve is already close to a finished article, even as the rest of the game runs below its ceiling. Against Borges, it was enough to win two tiebreaks and never face the sort of pressure that a cleaner day would have spared him entirely.
Nothing to say on the heat
The mindset, if it looks like complacency, is nothing of the sort. It is a plan – and one of the sharpest observers in the game thinks he can see its architecture. In a video posted to social media, Patrick Mouratoglou argued that Sinner is close to untouchable, with two specific caveats. “Jannik is almost unbeatable,” the coach said. “The only thing that can stop him is the heat and the length of the matches. If he solves these two problems, he’s unbeatable.”
Those two problems are not abstract. At Roland-Garros in May, Sinner led Juan Manuel Cerúndolo by two sets before cramping in the Paris heat and losing in five, one of the biggest shocks in the tournament’s history. It is the single blemish on his season, and Mouratoglou believes Sinner has spent the interim engineering it out. He was struck, he said, by the doubt Sinner showed in the first round – the sort of wobble that usually signals something is wrong – and by the champion’s own cryptic reference to having altered his preparation.
Sinner had put it plainly enough. “We did some changes,” he said before the tournament. “I feel well-prepared.” Mouratoglou’s reading is that the changes were not exotic but brutally simple. “People imagine, “wow, maybe he did crazy things”. No, no, no,” he said on Instagram. “The only thing he did: he practised at peak hours and he practised long.”
“Reminds me of Rafa”
The comparison he reached for was the most demanding on-court professional he has known. “It reminds me of Rafa. When the clay season started in Monte Carlo, the court was booked from eight to twelve every morning. Rafa was doing four hours in a row. Why four hours? Because the match can last five.”
Sinner, he suspects, has done the same – deliberately training in the heat and for longer than a match could ever demand. “I think that’s the exact right thing to do. I still think he’s the huge favourite.”
Sinner declined to look that far ahead. Asked about the heat to come, he offered only: “There’s still a long way to go, then we see.” He was similarly guarded about his decision to arrive at Wimbledon without a grass-court warm-up for the first time, a departure he said the team would review “after the tournament.”
The first couple of matches, I know they’re always tough. Now I’m past them
For now, the priority was simply clearing the tricky early rounds. “The first couple of matches, I know they’re always tough,” he said. “Now I’m past them.”
The reward is a third-round meeting with the American Jenson Brooksby, whom he has not faced since Washington in 2021. Sinner watched part of Brooksby’s impressive win over Ignacio Buse and was wary. “He’s kind of a new player, because we haven’t played for five years,” he said. “He has improved a lot. I’m also a different player. It’s going to be a very tough match, and I’m looking forward to it.”
If Mouratoglou is right, the version of Sinner that Brooksby meets – and the version that meets whoever comes after – will keep getting better, by design, precisely as the tournament gets harder. Far from his best, and entirely content to be. That, it seems, is the plan.
