Preview | Sinner vs. Zverev Wimbledon 2026 Final

**Gill Gross** (0:00)
Hey, everyone, Gill Gross here, and it is time for a preview of the 2026 Wimbledon Gentleman Singles Final between Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev. We'll also talk about today's semi-finals, although most of you will be watching this and listening to this on Saturday. In fact, I think I'll post it Saturday. I'm not in my normal setting. As you can see, I'm in Dallas for some exciting wedding-related activity. For that reason, no analysis tomorrow of the ladies final. Apologies for that. But, let's talk about previewing the final first. Sinner vs. Djokovic. 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 for Jannik Sinner. Both semis were straights. Both semis were straightforward.
This was right off the bat the best Jannik Sinner has played throughout Wimbledon and possibly the best he's played in a while. Maybe the best he's played since Madrid, right?
That said, this looked like most of the matches that Sinner and Djokovic have played since the start of 2024 In that stretch, Jannik Sinner is 5-1, and he hasn't been broken much. Something I talked about coming in, in this particular match, he faces one breakpoint, he fires off an ace. That was Novak's only look. In the past six meetings, to be exact, Djokovic has broken five times, which gives you a really good idea of just how dominant Jannik has been on serve. In this particular match, it was the first serve number that stood out, because Sinner was up at 88%. Second lowest number of Novak Djokovic's career in slams. The only time he was lower than, obviously, like 100 minus 88, so 12%, you could say 12% first return points won for Novak. The only time he's been lower than that was when he played Saffin at the Australian Open in 2005
But broadly speaking, it actually hasn't been the first serve returning for Djokovic in this head-to-head. It's actually been the second serve returning, because this match included in the six matches that they played since the start of 2024, Jannik's been up above 60% every time they've played. That speaks to a baseline-to-baseline advantage that Sinner has. Not just the firepower that he produced on his first serve. This is probably the best he's ever served. Not even probably. This match was the best he's ever served against Novak. This was a phenomenal serve and performance. But I think broadly speaking, the legs continue to be the biggest difference in these head-to-heads, because both of them are such phenomenal baseliners and ball strikers off of both wings. But Sinner has a physicality advantage when they're going toe-to-toe from the back of the court. Little extra power, right, maybe a little plus power, but I think more significant than the power gap is the speed gap. It's too easy for Sinner to damage Djokovic.
When he's behind the baseline, in the middle of the court, either wing, forehand or backhand, and he's able to produce damage from these positions. Like if you go, if you watch this match and you look at all of the positions that Sinner was able to damage Novak Djokovic from, that speaks to a mismatch between Sinner's power and Djokovic's ability to cover and absorb defensively. And that's really what I was seeing here. Djokovic can't trust his legs to keep him in points. That has multiple implications. That means that first off, in these neutral rallies, he is often going to be damaged first, knocked off balance, losing his contact point. And mind you, this isn't just about... The way to look at this, this is not about scrambling into the corners and playing emergency defenses, I would say. It's about, though, maybe the two shots before the winner comes off the racket of Sinner. That initial damaging blow, that may not be the big booming winner where Djokovic is in a full sprint going into the corner. What's more important is off that offensive kind of building attack that against a really, against, let's say maybe Alcáez, Carlos gets to the spot on balance, solid base, good contact point. Whereas, if you're a little slower, if you're not quick enough to get there, now you're leaning, reaching, you know, you're just not in as good a position to hit the shot. That doesn't mean that you were too slow to get to the ball, but it does mean you were too slow to hit a quality shot. And I think that's, that's the kind of, the nuance that matters here. Now, the other thing that's going to happen is Novak's going to feel that. Novak's going to feel as if, man, Jannik is damaging me from the back of the court quite easily. So I need to be first to damage him.
And, well, what happens there? Now, sometimes, obviously, Novak can redline off the ground incredibly effectively. But what's going to happen sometimes, and it happened a lot in this match, is you're going to get some overplays. You're going to get Djokovic overplaying the ball. And what I saw a lot is when Sinner was able to produce a lot of depth, Djokovic knew that he really couldn't pull back in response. Typically, if the ball is going to land on your baseline and you're having to kind of play off the rise, your shot at that point is compromised. You might take a little speed off. You might slow down your racket a little bit. Djokovic knows he can't do that. So you're getting these big cuts off of these deep shots, and that's where you're getting the misses, the errors from Novak. So, look, if you're going to ask me, which is the burning question here, well, what was the biggest difference between this match and their Australian Open match from January? And I think Sinner was better in this match, okay? So I don't want to smother that part of it. But I thought Djokovic was quicker. You know, Novak was quick when he needed to be quick when they played in Australia. And part of that was probably the rest coming into the match. Djokovic's ability to energy save and pick his spots within the match. And also maybe it helped that it was at night. And maybe it helped that they were playing on hard court, where everybody just moves a little bit better. So those would be all of the factors. I think that Djokovic also got away with more risky forehands in Australia. So that would be the other factor. I don't think as big a factor is just the speed around the court. But I do think that Novak, when he did look to redline his forehand, just didn't run into as much choppy errors. Or, you know, just didn't make as many mistakes as he did here. Another thing that I think has to do with probably daytime versus night time, hard court versus grass court, and also the fact that, look, we're calling the shots low percentage. We're calling the shots risky because they're low percentage and risky. So it is what it is. You're going to miss more when you're playing that way.