A CASE OF GREATNESS

Prestige dropped into the Australian Open to check out Louis Vuitton's latest trophy trunks...and caught the making of tennis history.

- JENNIFER CHEN AND ALVIN LIM

It was the third set of the men's final at the Australian Open in late January, and 22-year-old Jannik Sinner was hanging on by the skin of his teeth. The crowd was prepared for his opponent, Russian defending champion Daniil Medvedev, who was up four games in the set, to sweep the young Italian from the court. Many were resigned to the possibility that this match would be yet another walkover like that of the women's finals the day before, when Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka finished her Chinese opponent Zheng Qinwen in a little over an hour.

This evening, Sinner was a few smashes away from crushing defeat. Yet he hung on, clawing his way back to claim a fourth, then fifth set, until he upended expectations of his early demise to triumph gloriously after close to four hours of play.

Determination. Resilience. Patience. Mental will. The first Italian man to win a Grand Slam singles title in nearly 50 years deserved the standing ovation from the crowd. Here was someone who destroyed every softie criticism levelled at his generation.

Before the match, when the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, the name of the men's singles trophy, was taken out of its customised Louis Vuitton casing and presented to a packed stadium, it seemed like a heavy crown, laden with the weight of champions who had lifted it before. Sinner demonstrated he was worthy of the honour.