Sinner, a shift in power centre

The Italian world No.l was the flag-bearer in a men's tennis season that saw the new generation assert itself

- Rutvick Mehta

When Carlos Alcaraz won his second Grand Slam of 2024, he'd become the youngest to win majors across all three surfaces, at a rate quicker than Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. When Jannik Sinner won his second Grand Slam of 2024, he'd captured his first two majors in the same season, something even Djokovic, Nadal and Federer could not manage.

These couple of standout achievements tell you everything about the shifting dynamics of men's tennis in a season in which Djokovic did not win a single title on the professional tour for the first time since 2005 and Nadal will bid goodbye as a professional player this week.

Defined by a collective stranglehold of the Big Three, the nerve centre of men's tennis for a large part of the last couple of decades has finally been replaced by a newer, younger power centre. And within that, a 23-year-old soft-spoken Italian is ruling the roost like few men have before.

Sinner's ATP Finals triumph in Turin on Sunday was emblematic of the kind of season he's had. He beat American Taylor Fritz 6-4, 6-4 in a no-frills, utterly dominant performance in the final of the year-ending tournament where his opponents - each of them established top 10 players, mind you - at times felt like there was "nothing you can really do", as Fritz put it. Sinner did not drop more than four games in a set across any of his five matches, and did not lose a set (again, something even the Big Three can't flaunt in their record-setting CVs).