Wimbledon title puts Jannik Sinner on pace for a historic 2026 season, but it would be nice if his biggest rival was healthy

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If we could somehow forget what happened in Paris, when it looked like Jannik Sinner might literally melt in the 90-degree heat, we would be talking about his 2026 season among the most impressive in modern tennis history.

Sinner's Wimbledon triumph Sunday, where he defeated Alexander Zverev 6-7 (7), 7-6 (2), 6-3, 6-4, was his sixth title in the past seven tournaments. His record for the season is now 44-3, on pace with Novak Djokovic's 2015 (82-6) and Roger Federer's 2006 (92-5) among the best ever. At age 24, he's already won five Grand Slam titles, putting him on the heels of all-time names like Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg.

But while Sinner was laying waste to this Wimbledon field, dropping just three sets en route to the title, videos emerged of Carlos Alcaraz back in Spain, just starting to lightly swing a tennis racket again after recovering from an inflamed tendon sheath in his right wrist.

It is unclear if Alcaraz will be ready to come back by the US Open, which starts in seven weeks. For a tennis player, wrist injuries are nothing to mess around with.

But as much as Sinner has enjoyed hoovering up trophies while Alcaraz is sidelined, he should root for his nemesis to return to form as quickly as possible. Because while Sinner's greatness stands on its own, the respect and admiration for his achievements this year does not.

Though there are no asterisks in tennis — you can only beat who's in front of you, and every Grand Slam title counts the same — Sinner and Alcaraz are so linked that the absence of one inevitably diminishes any achievements of the other.

With all due respect to Zverev, the newly minted French Open champion who played at an extremely high level for the first 90 minutes of Sunday's final, there are only two players in men's tennis who move the needle right now. Zverev is not one of them.

At the end of last season, when Alcaraz and Sinner played a third straight major final against each other in New York, some fans wondered if it might get boring if they separated from the field without another worthy rival coming into the mix.

But here's the reality of men's tennis: While Zverev is a clear No. 3 and can beat either one on a given day, the only truly compelling storyline in the sport is the race to history between Alcaraz and Sinner. And we can't really measure it when one of them is at a training center hitting Nerf balls.

Remember where we were last September. Alcaraz had just won comprehensively in the US Open final to pull ahead 6-4 in the Grand Slam race, and about an hour after the match, Sinner came into his press conference brooding about how he had become too predictable and would make changes even if it cost him against other opponents.

No other opponent could make Sinner feel that way, could push him — in a year where he won two majors, mind you — to that kind of mental space. And it's paid off.

While Sinner hasn't reinvented the wheel, he is a better player on the margins now than he was a year ago. In the final against Zverev, he employed brutalizing drop shots and hit fantastic, clutch volleys. With tweaks to his technique, the serve has become a true weapon. And the strange physical collapse in Paris notwithstanding, Sinner seems a lot more comfortable than he used to be in the crucible of Grand Slam finals.

But without Alcaraz there to test him, how do we know?

To be fair, the most dominant stretch of Sinner's career started in early March when he reeled off titles at Indian Wells, Miami and Monte Carlo, all tournaments where Alcaraz was in the field. Those aren't majors, though. And when it's all said and done, their rivalry will not be defined by what happens in Beijing or Turin but rather how they stack up against each other at the four tournaments that matter most.

That's why those matches over the last few years have been must-watch events, some of them ranking among the most entertaining sporting events in years. Every time they play, the stakes just feel historically sky high. No matter who Sinner played Sunday, there is no way to reproduce that sensation without Alcaraz on the other side of the net.

It is not Sinner's fault that Alcaraz's wrist flared up at a terrible time in the calendar, forcing him out of Roland Garros and Wimbledon. But it is to his detriment in earning the respect that this Wimbledon title and this season overall deserves.

At some point in their rivalry, the shoe may be on the other foot and the same principle will apply. It does, in fact, raise the value of Alcaraz's seven Grand Slam titles that he's beaten Sinner in two of those finals and Novak Djokovic in three. True supremacy can only be measured against relative equals, and the Alcaraz-Sinner rivalry is already among the best and most consequential in the history of the sport with a lot more runway to go.

And hopefully a resumption in New York.