Jannik Sinner continues to extend his hold on the world no.1 ranking after avenging Carlos Alcaraz in the Wimbledon final and becoming the first Italian to win the grasscourt Grand Slam.
On this week’s episode of The Sit-Down podcast, American coaching legend Brad Stine noted a quality, which set Sinner apart.
“One of the big factors if you look back statistically at the match, he came in a significant amount of times in the match and finished at the net,” said Stine.
“His rate of success in coming in was pretty high and that’s not something that he would’ve done, you know, two years earlier. Maybe even a year earlier, but two years or three years ago I don’t think he would’ve done that very much.”
Stine, whose coaching successes included working with Jim Courier when he claimed the world No.1 ranking, and two Roland Garros and two Australian Open titles, praised the Italian for evolving his game style.
“That’s a credit to his coaches and to the team that he’s working with and to him for also being coachable and accepting the fact that, ‘that’s going to make me a better player or that’s a factor in my ability to beat someone like Carlos in that match’.
After a successful career spanning decades – during which Stine also worked with Sebastian Grosjean and guided Kevin Anderson to the 2018 Wimbledon final – the highly respected coach is now proud of a long partnership with countryman Tommy Paul, who he has been working with since late 2019.
“Tommy is a pretty complete player now,” said Stine, of the evolution that Paul, a recent top-10 player who now sits at world No.16, has undergone in the five years they’ve worked together.
“He utilises [the] slice backhand. He’s playing bigger off the ground. That was something that we wanted to try and do. He comes forward as much or more than just about anybody on tour, and that’s been a progression. It’s taken some time.
“We have a little thing that we talk about all the time, you know, the first off-season that we did together, you know, we called Tommy 1.0 and we’re now this year we’re in Tommy 6.0 and I think Tommy 6.0 is a very different player.”
Paul joins a brigade of American men who are now contenders for the big titles and arguably reigniting a golden era for US men’s tennis.
Taylor Fritz, the current world No.4, leads the pack and has been close to lifting a major trophy after reaching the 2024 US Open final. Recent top-10 debutant Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe are closely following. All three of those players are Grand Slam semifinalists.
“I think that there’s a healthy sense of competition amongst those guys, that they’re very supportive of each other,” said Stine. “I think they’re honestly happy to see the other guys doing well, but at the same time they want to be ahead of the other guys.
“There’s definitely a push to try and catch those guys.”
Currently, they are 13 American men in the top 100 with names such as Alexander Michelsen, Learner Tien and Ethan Quinn leading the younger generation.
“It would certainly be nice to see 15, 16, 18 [or] 20 guys, you know, American guys that are in the top 100 and we do need to keep pushing forward.”
The only thing Stine said was missing was a Grand Slam champion. Perhaps that wasn’t too far away.
“Potentially to win a big title you’ve got to maybe beat both [Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz] and that’s a tough ask,” said Stine.
“On a given day, I think, you know, all the American guys are capable of beating any of the top players, so yeah American tennis is in a great place.”