Carlos Alcaraz pulls off stunning comeback as he saves THREE championship points to beat Jannik Sinner and retain his French Open title in epic final

Borg v McEnroe 1980, Wimbledon. Nadal v Federer 2008, Wimbledon. Alcaraz v Sinner 2025, Roland Garros. On a Sunday in Paris, a 22-year-old Spaniard and a 23-year-old Italian sent themselves into the tennis pantheon. At five hours and 29 minutes it was the longest match in French Open history – and quite possibly the best.

Jannik Sinner is the greatest player in the world. Unfortunately for him, Carlos Alcaraz is not of this world. He is a being of shooting stars and comets and he pulled off the greatest comeback in the 148-year history of Grand Slam tennis.

Alcaraz trailed by two sets to love – a scoreline he had never come back from in his career. In the fourth set he was 5-3 and 40-0 down, facing three championship points. And he won. He won with fearless aggression and peerless finesse. He won despite 79 unforced errors and thanks to 70 winners. He won 4-6, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 7-6 to remain unbeaten through five Grand Slam finals and extend his winning run against his greatest rival to five matches. He won to become the first man in history to save three match points to win a Grand Slam title.

The expectation for this match was stratospheric. In their first meeting in a Grand Slam final, 15,000 fans on Philippe Chatrier and millions watching on TV were waiting for a match to rubber-stamp this as the successor to great rivalries of the past. It was an impossible billing, ridiculous hype, but somehow this match lived up to it all.

Sinner is a master of precision and fundamentals and, nearly always, that is what modern men’s tennis is about. Nearly always; once in a while it is about pure genius and this was such a day.

Let us try to chart the eddies and currents of this extraordinary tennis match. Alcaraz leads the head to head and this matchup is all about the Spaniard’s ebbs and flows.

When he has a bad spell, Sinner is always going to be good enough to take advantage. So can Sinner survive when Alcaraz runs hot, can he counter-attack to force another dip?

Alcaraz started the sharper of the two, but after four epic opening games we were half an hour in and still on serve.

Alcaraz finally broke through in the fifth game but Sinner had begun to settle. In the opening exchanges he had been going for too much, too early in the points. He got back to his relentless rhythms, putting the emphasis back on Alcaraz and the Spaniard threw in one of his wobbly patches: three unforced errors to be broken back, then four unforced errors at 4-5 to concede the break and the set.

Sinner had to give so much to hold on to his serve in the opening stages, yet so little to earn his two breaks of serve. He had won his last 29 matches after winning the first set and another poor Alcaraz game gave him a 2-0 lead in the second.

Alcaraz was fading. He shanked one ball high into the stands and the Chatrier crowd were becoming uneasy: this was not the epic there had been promised.

Alcaraz recovered enough to reach 6-6, but at 4-2 down in the tiebreak he played a ridiculously ambitious drop shot, given the conditions. The wind caught the ball and dragged it out.

This was the ninth time Alcaraz had gone two sets down in his career, and he had lost the previous eight.

When Sinner broke in the first game of the third set the title was ever so close. Fans who had come expecting an epic were being shown a procession. But at the brink of disaster Alcaraz blazed into life, rolling through the next four games, including a stunning 22-shot rally to break Sinner for a second time.

As he brought up three set points, standing yards away from Dustin Hoffman in the posh courtside seats, Alcaraz swept his arms to the crowd – come on Dusty, let’s raise the volume.

He closed out the set and stood stock still, finger to his ear as the crowd roared, baying for an epic.

That set snapped a run of 31 consecutive sets in Grand Slams for Sinner, stretching back to the fourth round of the Australian Open.

The fourth set brought a run of sustained, settled quality, but Sinner struck with some vintage, lasered groundstrokes to break for 4-3. With Alcaraz serving at 3-5, 0-40, Sinner had three championship points.

But the thing with Alcaraz is you never know when the force will awaken. Like the T-rex in Jurassic Park, he looks as though he’s sleeping but then the eye snaps open and it’s time to run for your life.

He flew at Sinner like a whirlwind, winning 13 of the next 14 points. On the last of those points, Sinner slapped a forehand into the bottom of the net, not even trying to get it in. That was very unlike sangfroid Sinner, and it showed how the moment was getting to him, with the crowd baying for a fifth set.

The Italian’s team were on their feet after every point he won now, in an effort to transmit some energy on to the court. Sinner clung on to force another tiebreak.

From 2-0 down Alcaraz rifled a forehand winner then struck consecutive aces – just his fifth and sixth of the match.

Sinner’s crosscourt forehand, usually so steady, was beginning to crack and he dragged another one wide to go 4-2 down.

Alcaraz swung a forehand into the opening court and the set, somehow, was his.

The first point of the deciding set brought another ragged error from the Sinner forehand. He looked to be wilting physically now. Perhaps the lack of match toughness – he had dropped not a single set this fortnight- was beginning to tell. Perhaps also the three-month absence from competition as he served a ban for unintentional doping.

Another forehand in the net and two break points for Alcaraz. On the second, he cut a backhand drop shot and after Sinner sliced it wide he literally hobbled to his chair to change ends.

The drop shot is Alcaraz’s favourite club but Sinner plays so tight to the baseline, and moves so well, that it largely stayed in the bag. Until now. With Sinner physically compromised, Alcaraz reached for his favourite shot like a torturer for his scalpel.

At 2-1 Sinner mounted some dogged resistance, and at deuce Alcaraz struck what may be the best drop shot of his career, a forehand hack off a low ball to send it skimming across the net like a pebble across the surface of a lake.

He flicked a backhand from behind him down at Sinner’s feet; dived across the clay for a winning volley; threw so much into one forehand winner he almost fell over.

And yet Sinner clung on, keeping it to a single break and forcing Alcaraz to serve it out. Then he found a final gear, punching two brilliant backhand returns to take a 30-15 lead. Alcaraz hit a superb drop shot, surely a winner. But Sinner gave the run of his life and, when he got there, the touch of his life to feather it back over for a winner.

He broke, then held, then with Alcaraz serving to stay in it came another all-timer shot. This time is was Alcaraz, pushed deep and wide into his forehand corner, hacking a slice forehand in a dead diagonal to the opposite corner. Sinner pinned a backhand return on the line.

Then Alcaraz, from downtown, hit an impossible angle of a backhand pass. In the tiebreak, Alcaraz focussed his fire on the deep forehand corner where Sinner’s physical issues were most pronounced – such tactical precision in such heightened circumstances. A drop-shot drive volley combination came out next and he won it– by 10 points to 2 – with a swerving forehand passing shot. Surely the greatest ever individual performance in a tiebreak ever.

The best match ever? To each his own to judge. But what played out in that final half-hour…I have never seen tennis like it in 25 years watching this grand old game. I could barely type my hands were shaking so much; how they were able to produce that I will never, ever know.

Before we go – do we really have to go? – enormous credit to both men for refusing to take the customary bathroom break in the attempt to snap an opponent’s momentum. They both stayed on the court for the whole five hours and that meant the drama of the match was never interrupted, the magic never broken.

For Alcaraz and Sinner, a heartfelt thankyou. And also a save-the-date: July 13, Centre Court, Wimbledon, SW19 – let’s do it all over again.