How swapping ski slopes for tennis courts has paid off for Jannik Sinner

At 22, Sinner remains understated in interviews, especially by comparison with flamboyant compatriots like Fognini. After his mesmerising performance against Djokovic on Friday, one might have expected him to be bubbling over with excitement. Instead, he addressed on-court interviewer Jim Courier in a flat monotone that felt reminiscent of the young Andy Murray.

As with Murray, though, there is a sense of humour lurking beneath that droning voice. A couple of hours after Sinner’s win, his two-man coaching team dropped into the interview room to discuss his recent surge. Sinner himself popped his head around the door to ask “How is it to coach Jannik?”

Questioned later about Sinner’s geographical origins, his Italian coach Simone Vagnozzi replied: “For sure it’s a different part of Italy. I think this part of Italy normally is really serious. They don’t speak so much. And from the outside maybe you see this with Jannik, but in reality is a guy who wants to make a joke, wants to have a smile always.

“It’s really serious on the court when he practises,” Vagnozzi added, “and this is maybe the German part of him. But he is also really funny, and this is more Italian part.”

And so to Sunday’s final. We are about to witness a tennis rarity: a new name inscribed on the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup. The last time this happened was in 2014, when Stan Wawrinka gatecrashed the Djokovic/Federer/Nadal triopoly that otherwise stretches back to 2005.

On Sunday, Sinner’s opponent will be 27-year-old Daniil Medvedev, the eccentric Russian who has already played five major finals. Unfortunately for him, three of these have come against Djokovic and two against Nadal, so his conversion rate is extremely low. But he did at least manage to nip in and seize his lone grand-slam title at the 2022 US Open, when an exhausted Djokovic hit an emotional wall.

Despite the sizeable experience gap – Sinner has never made it this far in a major before – most bookmakers are quoting Sinner as the slight favourite. He simply has more firepower than the metronomic Medvedev. And he applied it at the end of last season, overturning a previously dismal head-to-head by beating Medvedev three times in the space of six weeks. The defining image was of a 100mph forehand, struck down the line by a rampaging Sinner, that had his laconic Australian coach Darren Cahill chuckling in disbelief.