Wimbledon final: Jannik Sinner comes back against Alexander Zverev to defend title
Relive live coverage of the 2026 Wimbledon men’s final on The Athletic
THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — Jannik Sinner beat Alexander Zverev 6-7(7), 7-6(2), 6-3, 6-4 in the Wimbledon final at the All England Club.
The No. 1 seed prevailed over the No. 2 seed in a tight, staccato match, ultimately decided by Zverev’s bravery on his forehand, both players’ serving and a costly fall late in the third set.
It is Sinner’s second consecutive Wimbledon title and his fifth Grand Slam singles title. The defeat scuppers Zverev’s attempt to win the Channel Slam (the French Open and Wimbledon in the same season), but his run to the final sees him overtake Carlos Alcaraz as world No. 2.
The Athletic’s writers, Ava Wallace, Charlie Eccleshare and Matt Futterman, analyze the final and what it means for tennis.
How did Zverev make good mistakes to win the first set?
Zverev and everyone else knew that it was likely going to take perfect tennis to challenge Sinner.
The problem? It is almost impossible to play perfect tennis against the world No. 1, especially when he is on his game.
Through the first set, Sinner wasn’t quite on his game, and Zverev still played just about the best tennis he possibly could against an opponent of Sinner’s caliber.
It wasn’t just the first-serve percent and his success rate on those points, which was 74 percent in and 81 percent won. He won 9 of 11 points on his second serve, as both players appeared to struggle with the rarity of the opportunities they were getting to see a serve that didn’t just fly past them.
And, most importantly, he missed his forehand. A lot. He made 10 unforced errors on that wing — and that was part of his strategy. Zverev was accelerating through the shot, trying to force the issue and keep Sinner on defense, to open the court to hit winners. Through the opening set, Zverev had 15 unforced errors against seven for Sinner, but Sinner had 20 forced errors against 6 for Zverev. So often in their head-to-head, Sinner has been the aggressor and Zverev the backboard. For over an hour on Centre Court, the dynamic flipped.
Alexander Zverev used his forehand as a weapon to push Jannik Sinner back and go on the attack. (Ben Whitley / PA Images via Getty Images)
And in the tiebreak, when Sinner so often puts the hammer down and forces opponents into errors, Zverev played arguably his best tennis of the set. He matched Sinner big serve for big serve. Sinner hit the chalk for a serve winner. Then Zverev hit the chalk for an ace.
And perhaps most importantly, he kept smacking his forehand, especially on set point, when he nailed a ball down the line to take the set and let out a roar.
He started the tiebreak with 10 forehand errors, and was still on the same number when he took the set, 16 points later.
— Matt Futterman
How does the Wimbledon roof impact match conditions?
Ava Wallace and Madison Eades
What about Sinner’s tennis this fortnight evades statistics?
Throughout his title defense, Sinner’s serve had been a marvel. It has scared the lines, released pressure and frustrated opponents, making them feel like they have to be perfect against him to get into a match. Just as Zverev made Sinner feel during the first part of the final.
He has needed it to be one, because his semifinal against Novak Djokovic, Sinner’s baseline game has been off-kilter in the same way that it was between his Australian Open semifinal loss to Djokovic and his title run at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif. Not eye-catchingly misfiring. Not going wrong in a way easily visible in one or two statistics. Just not quite there, in terms of timing and power.
That continued Sunday, as Zverev bullied Sinner on the forehand side, ripping the ball against the world No. 1 as Sinner and Alcaraz have so often done to Zverev. Sinner, looking out of rhythm during the tournament, was now having to deal with both a fast incoming ball and a staccato match, with few rallies and sequences of unreturned serves from both ends.
Jannik Sinner on the stretch during the final. (Getty Images)
When Sinner missed a couple of forehands as he served to stay in the second set, down 5-4, it looked as though the shakiness with it throughout the tournament might finally be about to catch up with him. An unconvincing drive volley a couple of games later, that Zverev fired for a winner, only added to that sense.
In the tiebreak though, Zverev reverted to overspinning errors as Sinner found his groove. The defending champion refused to back off in a forehand-to-forehand exchange and eventually drew an error from his opponent to lead it 2-0. An inside-out forehand on the next point set up an easy smash, before a brilliant forehand return off a 129 mph Zverev serve, followed by a forehand winner down the line, then earned Sinner four set points at 6-2.
It really was the perfect time for the shot to finally click at this year’s Wimbledon.
— Charlie Eccleshare
Why was Sinner walking all over the back of Centre Court?
For a while in the first and second sets, it looked like Sinner was trying to do a tour of every blade of Centre Court grass behind the baselines. He would stand in. He would stand back. He would stand wide. He would alternate where he stood from point to point.
All that moving around just showed how effective Zverev’s serve was. The 29-year-old German hits most of his first serves above 130 mph, can hit wide ones above 120 mph, and even sends down second serves somewhere around 115 mph. For most of his career, Zverev hadn’t been able to find that speed in bigger matches. He would miss targets and then roll in second serves. A correction to his ball toss — taking away some of the height — has helped with that the past two years.
Sunday, he was zoning. Zverev served at 83 percent in the second set. Heading into the tiebreak he was winning 70 percent of his first-serve points — and not without Sinner doing everything he could to get purchase on the ball.
He went into Medvedevshire, the deep return position adopted by Daniil Medvedev, inherited from the likes of Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem, In the opening set, Sinner hit over half his first-serve returns from more than two meters behind the baseline. In the second set, he started standing in more, but when he went back, he went way back, almost into the crowd.
On five points he was more than 4 meters behind the baseline. He won only one of them.
But in the tiebreak, Sinner stayed in the same spot — tight to the baseline. Zverev’s serve is one of the biggest in the sport, but he doesn’t scare the lines like Sinner does at the best of times and in pressure moments, he will aim to the center of the box or wide, but not right in the corners.
Sinner knew that, and he started to middle his returns just when he needed to be at his best.
In the tiebreak, the world No. 1 hit five returns, all of them from less than two meters behind the baseline. He won four points out of five, and when it was over, the match was even.
— Matt Futterman
How did a slip cause a momentum shift in the third set?
The first real momentum swing of the match happened in the seventh game of the third set, with Zverev holding break point. He slipped attempting to recover a drop shot and appeared to hyperextend his right knee. He stayed on the ground for a few moments clutching his leg into his chest, and as Sinner walked over to check on him, Zverev stood, tested his knee and walked to the baseline.
But he didn’t seem quite right after. While it wasn’t immediately obvious that his running or movement during rallies was affected, he appeared hesitant to put full pressure on his right knee.
That affected his backhand, which he couldn’t step into fully, and more obviously, his service motion. Zverev couldn’t push off of his foot normally and as a result, couldn’t extend as he usually does on his serve.
Serving at 40-40, 3-4, he coaxed an error from Sinner to earn a game point. Then he double-faulted on the ad side, unable to fully extend into hitting a flat serve wide, and hit a forehand out by just a hair to give Sinner a break point.
Again, Zverev couldn’t fully extend into a wide serve, and Sinner got the ball back in play.
It was Sinner who slipped mid-point this time, but the Italian recovered to force another long forehand out of Zverev to earn the break. Zverev tossed his racket to the back of the court when he finally gave up the game to hand Sinner a 5-3 lead, and after Sinner held at love to consolidate the break, he had established a decisive lead.
— Ava Wallace
How did Sinner and Zverev respond to pressure closing in?
As the match moved to a fourth set and the clock ticked past 7 p.m., time became a factor in a couple of different ways, one new, and one old.
With a 4 p.m. start time, a possible roof closure loomed. The tournament had closed the roof at 7:40 p.m. during Djokovic’s quarterfinal against Félix Auger-Aliassime. The first three sets Sunday lasted three hours and 35 games.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which helped with the issue of light, but the tournament prefers not to close during the middle of a set. Both players are exceptional indoors, so it’s not clear who would gain the edge, but no one wants to end a match in a different setting than the one they started in.
The second factor was the number everyone in tennis seems to know: Sinner has never won a match longer than three hours and 50 minutes. But it was Zverev who appeared to feel the pressure of a deadline more.
In the early stages of the fourth, he started lacing forehands again. He bulleted three in a row to get to deuce in Sinner’s first service game, and then banged one into the corner a couple of games later to get himself to 0-30. Sinner held, but the intention was clear: If he was going to go down, Zverev was going to do so fighting.
Jannik Sinner held steady in the fourth set to claim the Wimbledon title. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
It may have been that any lingering knee discomfort clarified things for Zverev, just as impending cramps had done in the closing stages of the fourth set of the French Open final last month against Flavio Cobolli.
Zverev’s backhand down the line was starting to fire as well here, and if Sinner was going to get the job done before the closure of the roof, he was going to have to raise his level.
Sinner did just that, winning an outstanding point in the seventh game of the set with a brilliant lob and rock-solid volley combo to move up 0-15 on the way to breaking serve for a 4-3 lead. Zverev kept up the aggressiveness, saving one of three break points he faced with a brave serve-and-volley play, but his attack felt increasingly high-wire.
A deep return from Sinner pushed Zverev back, and a forehand winner propelled him toward victory.
— Matt Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare
And how did Sinner close out victory?
Zverev opened Sinner’s next service game with two consecutive errors, both times looking at his coaches afterwards with his palms up to the sky. Sinner was in full flow now, and Zverev was slowly unraveling, his ability to put pressure on the Italian sapped. He held serve to make it 5-4, but it was clear his time was running out.
The crowd applauded and whistled for Sinner as he stepped to the line to serve out the match, ready to explode.
They did — but not for a Sinner winner. Zverev had a few last gasps to give, including out-dueling Sinner at net one final time on a point that involved a Sinner body-roll volley that dropped wide. Sinner got Zverev back with a tense, crosscourt rally that he ended when he just nudged a backhand over the net at an angle sharper than Zverev could return.
One booming forehand winner later, Sinner, after a year of waiting, finally had his fifth Grand Slam, and his second Wimbledon crown.
— Ava Wallace
What did Jannik Sinner say after the final?
We’ll bring you their on-court quotes and press conference reflections as they come in.
What did Alexander Zverev say after the final?
We’ll bring you their on-court quotes and press conference reflections as they come in.