Jannik Sinner’s march continues unstoppable and without hesitation to conquer the Internazionali BNL d’Italia tennis championship fifty years after Adriano Panatta. The world no.1 overcomes the Australian Alexei Popyrin with impressive ease with a score of 6-2, 6-0 and enters the round of 16 where the surprising Andrea Pellegrino (who beat Frances Tiafoe 7-6 6-1) awaits him for an all-Italian derby.
For Sinner it is the 30th consecutive victory in the Masters 1000 and is now just one victory away from the historic record of Novak Djokovic who won 31 consecutive races in this category. Given Jannik’s form and the absence of really challenging opponents in Rome (at least until the semi-finals), it is easy to hypothesize that he can equal and then beat this record: on Wednesday in the round of 16 in the derby with Pellegrino (Sinner won 100% of the matches against his compatriots) he can equal Djokovic and then, in the quarter-finals, the Russian Andery Rublev will probably be the last obstacle to the record. But Sinner’s goal is certainly not this: he has the chance to win Rome by achieving – another absolute record, which already belongs to him with 5 successes in a row – the sixth consecutive Masters 1000, becoming together with the usual Djokovic the only one to have achieved the Career Masters 1000, having won all nine of the most important tournaments after the Slams and the ATP Finals.
Today, paradoxically, the Australian Popyrin paid heavily for the heat in terms of scores and level of play. In fact, with a less hostile climate, Sinner would have limited himself to playing as usual at this point of the tournament at a level sufficient to win, but without necessarily winning by a landslide, as he did in the debut match with Ofner which ended 6-3 6-4.
However today, due to the great heat, the world number was in a hurry and liquidated the Popyrin case in just over an hour. Yet another test of strength on a packed Central pitch, with rather lukewarm fans, given the clear gap between the two. Proof of this is also the few chants and very few shouts of encouragement (sic!) for Sinner. Just a couple of «Go Gianni!» (from those who feel the need to forcefully Italianize the name of the national champion) is a more local: «Go red!».