Difficult to say anything about this match that hasn’t been said. I never felt so tense during a match in my life, that didn’t have Bjorn, Pete or Rafa in it. Clearly the greatest ever FO final. Momentum shifts, the outcome hanging in the balance throughout, unbelievable shotmaking from both. Great strength of character. John McEnroe jumped a shark by saying they’d both beat Rafa - who never even played a fifth set in a FO final in his whole career - but you could understand the enthusiasm. We all watched something incredible.
But the fifth set tiebreak was the single greatest performance I’ve ever seen in any match of this scale. Already the match was going to be the greatest in that stadium, but Carlos in the fifth set tiebreak created his own masterpiece, something we haven’t seen from any of the greatest players of the past. It makes you reach for superlatives and dive off a cliff into pretentious withering. It was the final movement of Mozart’s final symphony, it was Sad-Eyed Lady at the end of Blonde on Blonde - it was just something that transcends the sport in a way even the Big 3 couldn’t do. When John McEnroe said that about both players beating Rafa in Paris I scoffed - except I do have to wonder how Rafa would have gotten into that tiebreak. It’s really difficult to see anyone live with that.
Carlos made “God-mode” seem like an inadequate term. There’s no way to describe it - they’d played for over five hours, they’d suffered crashing disappointments, swelling hopes they’d grab the title - then Carlitos played as if Sinner didn’t exist, as if he himself had switched off and gone someplace else, some place where he calmly and routinely played seven miraculously perfect points to obliterate his opponent, and end it all.
They asked Pete Sampras what he was thinking when he second-serve aced Agassi to win the ‘99 Wimbledon final. Pete said he was thinking nothing. Carlos may well have been in that same place, but for seven points.
It was Mozart’s fugue - but improvised in front of a crowd the size of the whole world, and with Sinner at his very best trying to stop him.
That was something we’ve never seen before, by anyone…