"It's Only a Point"

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In any sports fan's life, there are certain matches that, long after they’re over, still keep you up at night. Just as you start to drift off, you dream of that one turning point you can't go back and change. You wake up in disbelief, and the whole world just feels... gray. It’s like losing something truly important.

If you're a Liverpool fan, one of those matches is probably the one against Chelsea at the end of the 2013-14 Premier League season. That was when captain Steven Gerrard had his "infamous slip," costing them the title they were so close to winning after an 11-game streak. But for tennis fans (especially Jannik Sinner's), the latest match to cause that kind of heartbreak—the kind that might send you through the five stages of grief—was the men's final at Roland Garros 2025, just three weeks ago.

In that match, Jannik Sinner went up two sets to love. And even though Carlos Alcaraz managed to take the third, Sinner earned himself three match points in the fourth set. But he just couldn't close it out. In the end, he lost to Alcaraz in a nail-biting fifth-set super tiebreak after a marathon match lasting five hours and 29 minutes.

The most painful losses aren't the blowouts; they're the ones that are agonizingly close. Losing... when you know you were right there, that you had a real shot at winning. To get that close to victory only to have it slip through your fingers makes all that grueling effort, that long-fought battle, feel like it was all for nothing. Because in sports, there can only be one winner.

I mean, if we, the fans who weren't even on the court, have been in a funk for days—to the point that Wimbledon has started and we're still haunted by it—I can't even begin to imagine the immense weight Jannik Sinner, at just 23 years old, must be carrying.

Sinner's coach, Darren Cahill, said that after walking off the court, Sinner locked himself in the locker room for 15-20 minutes. (A journalist later revealed that Sinner had been crying for 15 minutes before he came out to apologize to the press for the delay.) Then, his coaching team went in one by one to hug him, not saying much more than how proud they were of him.

But despite the pain, Sinner, who's known for his maturity beyond his years, later gave an interview with a remarkably wise perspective. "Yes, it hurts, but you can't be sad forever. You have to try and forget it and just take the positives," he said (like the fact that he's improved so much on clay). He also added, "This kind of loss can always happen. It has happened to other players, and I'm not the first one."

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Roger Federer is another player who knows exactly what that kind of devastating loss feels like. In the 2019 Wimbledon final, which went to a fifth set, Federer broke Novak Djokovic and was serving for the match at 8-7. He even had two match points at 40-15, but he just couldn't get it done. The score was leveled at 8-8, and it all came down to a tiebreak, which he ended up losing.

Of course, this is another one of those matches that will haunt Federer fans forever. Especially when you consider what was on the line: if he had won that point, it would have been his ninth Wimbledon title and his 21st Grand Slam. It was the one trophy Fed fans wanted to see him cap off his career with more than any other.

But Federer was still luckier than many other players. Because even though the loss was agonizing, it happened late in his career. More importantly, he already had 20 Grand Slams under his belt. It’s a completely different story from someone like Guillermo Coria, who lost the 2004 Roland Garros final and, by all accounts, never truly got over it.

That year, the Argentine, Coria, was on fire on the clay courts and was a huge favorite to win Roland Garros, especially with Federer knocked out early and in an era before Rafael Nadal had truly burst onto the scene. In the final, he faced Gaston Gaudio, a dark horse ranked 44th in the world. Coria was cruising, up 6-0, 6-3. Anyone watching would have thought it was in the bag. But in the third set, Coria started suffering from cramps and ultimately lost to Gaudio in five sets, even after having match points of his own.

That loss completely derailed Coria's career. He never reached another Slam final and never won another title of any kind—not even at the Challenger level, where he ended up playing as his ranking plummeted. Coria quietly retired in 2009, plagued by chronic injuries and a shattered confidence he could never rebuild.

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The question on everyone's mind now is: and what about Jannik Sinner? How much will he be affected mentally by this loss?

Of course, no one knows the answer—not even Sinner himself. But if we were to guess based on the mindset he's shown in past interviews, there's reason to be hopeful that this wound might not take too long to heal. Just look at why he chose to give up skiing to get serious about tennis: in skiing, if you make one mistake, one fall, you can lose the entire race. But with tennis, he explained, if you mess up, you always have a chance to come back and fix it, right up until it's "Game, Set, Match."

(Sinner was a national junior ski champion, but at 13, he chose to pursue tennis, leaving home to train at the Piatti Tennis Center, where Riccardo Piatti, seeing his potential, sponsored him completely.)

Or, as his coach Darren Cahill once said about his student, Sinner understands that tennis is just one small part of his life, especially now as he’s transitioning from a young man into an adult.

This attitude from Sinner isn't new. In fact, it perfectly echoes a couple of key points Roger Federer made when he was invited to give the commencement speech for the graduating class at Dartmouth College in 2024. In his speech, Federer drew on lessons from tennis as metaphors for life, explaining that, “It’s only a point. When it’s done, it’s just what’s behind you”. And that, “Life is bigger than the court” .

Sometimes, a heartbreaking loss is there to teach an important lesson. The only thing that matters is getting past it…

Here's hoping that the young man from a small town in Italy, Jannik Sinner, will put this experience to good use, both in his tennis career and in his life.

Sources

atptour.com

thedailyguardian.com

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