There aren't a lot of tennis stars that have been downright loathed by most of the tennis community of fans since I have been alive but Jannik Sinner is pretty loathed. I don't know of anyone that roots for him and mostly people tune into his matches in the hopes that he is going to be defeated.
What Sinner has done to receive this hatred isn't entirely his fault but a lot of it has to do with people's tendency to hate on whoever it is that wins all the time, and combine this with the fact that the heads of the ATP are the same nationality as Sinner is, and there are a lot of "very convenient" situations that the Italian ends of getting his way that make people suspicious that Jannik is receiving special treatments because of his nationality and the connections that he gets as a result.
Plus he is a ginger and as we all know, gingers don't have souls.
in his recent match against relatively unknown Argentinian Juan Manuel Cerúndolo, things started out exactly like you would expect with Sinner dominating the first 2 sets 6-3, 6-2, and even going up 5-1 in the 3rd set.
There was a lot of speculation about what was going on here and the main reason that people come up with is that it was extremely hot on the court and I don't know about you, but exercising for 3 hours under the blazing sun has a tendency to take it out of me. But for some reason, it didn't seem to affect Juan nearly as much.
At one point Sinner appeared to be on the verge of collapse due to heat exhaustion and requested a medical timeout because of it. This is where things get a bit dicey even though we can kind of relate to being that hot no matter where you are from. Sinner got his medical timeout in the same tournament where someone who isn't Italian couldn't get a bathroom break even though at one point he shouted "I'm going to S**T my pants!" to the referee.
Call me callous if you must, but I think if you are incapable of continuing for ANY reason, poopoo or because it is too hot, then you need to withdraw. Not having this rule in place only invites corruption and favoritism.
It is not often that I will say this, but I actually kind of admire Jannik's resolve and the fact that he carried on playing even once it appeared "done and dusted" and that he was going to lose.
Imagine being completely exhausted, feeling faint, and then carrying on for 3 more sets of tennis in the same heat that made you feel faint to begin with. Continuing on even when you are down 6-1 in the 4th set and not showing any sign of recovering is certainly admirable. He could have just quit at any time but didn't and I even though I still want him to lose, I have a lot more appreciation for the man now.
I find it rather funny that at least part of the reason why my favorite tennis player Danlil Medvedev resigned to defeat a few days ago was because this tournament normally seems as though it is in the bag for other players, including and especially Jannik Sinner.
I think someone who is likely the most excited about Sinner's early departure from the French Open is Frances Tiafoe, who is a good player at 19th ranked in the world, but it was just presumed that he was going to lose to Sinner in the quarterfinals. Now, this tournament is wide open and there is no real favorite.
The entire brackets is far too large for me to bother putting here but there are a lot of interactive tournament brackets that you can access including the one I use at ESPN
Others to be excited about following Sinner's elimination is of course Novak Djokovic, who is a crowd favorite everywhere in the world. Unfortunately for him, he has what is likely the most difficult next couple of matches ahead of him
At the moment, this is the ONLY portion of the bracket that all of the contenders are top-30 ranked players. At 39 years of age, Nole isn't actually the oldest person playing. That honor belongs to Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland, but he was eliminated in the first round. Of the remaining players, Nole is the "grandpappy" of the bunch.
To me, Alcaraz not playing and Sinner getting eliminated made this a lot more interesting to watch and we could see some outlier player end up getting a major under their belt that otherwise they wouldn't be able to do. Now the only thing that needs to happen is for Zverev to also get upset and eliminated.
