Jannik Sinner Looks Like the Man to Beat — But Grass Still Punishes Certainty
Jannik Sinner entered Wimbledon as the defending champion, world number one and overwhelming favourite in a men’s draw missing Carlos Alcaraz.
Two matches later, that position has not changed.
But the feeling around it has.
Sinner is safely through to the third round after defeating Nuno Borges 7–6, 7–6, 6–4 on Centre Court. It was his ninth consecutive victory at Wimbledon and a significant improvement on the five-set struggle that opened his title defence.
He remains the player everybody expects to win.
He is also a reminder that grass does not care how certain everybody feels.
On hard courts, the best player can slowly impose himself. On clay, physical and tactical superiority often has time to emerge.
Grass is less patient.
A loose service game can disappear within minutes. A mistimed return can decide a set. A player can spend two hours looking superior and still find himself facing a tiebreak against someone serving as though the laws of probability have temporarily been suspended.
That is why Sinner can look like the obvious champion and still feel vulnerable.
Not weak.
Vulnerable.
There is a difference.
The Favourite for Obvious Reasons
The case for Sinner begins with the obvious.
He won Wimbledon in 2025 and arrived at this year’s tournament as the top seed. With Alcaraz absent through injury, bookmakers installed him as a heavy odds-on favourite to retain the title.
That status is not based on reputation alone.
Sinner’s game fits modern grass increasingly well.
His groundstrokes are compact and brutally clean. He takes the ball early, removes time from opponents and redirects pace without needing exaggerated preparation.
On a surface where hesitation is punished, Sinner rarely looks hurried.
His backhand is particularly valuable. It remains stable under pressure, allowing him to absorb low balls and turn neutral exchanges into attacks before opponents have properly settled into the point.
His movement has improved.
His serve has become more reliable.
And unlike some baseline-dominant players, he does not need lengthy rallies to establish control. He can take over a point within two or three shots.
That makes him extremely difficult to rush.
It also makes him difficult to surprise.
In theory.
The First Round Was the Warning
Sinner’s opening match against Miomir Kecmanović offered a useful reminder that theory means little once the grass begins behaving like grass.
The defending champion lost the opening set, fell behind two sets to one and required five sets to escape with a 4–6, 6–3, 6–7, 6–2, 6–3 victory.
A champion recovering from trouble is usually framed as proof of character.
That is fair.
Sinner did not panic. He raised his level, improved his serving and eventually took control.
But it was also evidence of how quickly Wimbledon can become dangerous.
Kecmanović did not need to dominate the match.
He needed to serve well, take opportunities early and keep Sinner uncomfortable for long enough that the scoreboard began applying its own pressure.
That is the grass-court formula.
An opponent does not have to be better than Sinner across five sets.
He may only need to be almost perfect for three of them.
The narrow margins can make rankings feel less important than they do elsewhere.
A lower-ranked player with a strong serve and no fear can turn a supposedly routine afternoon into a crisis before the favourite has settled into the tournament.
Sinner survived.
He may not be given the chance to recover so easily later.
The Borges Victory Was Better — But Not Effortless
The scoreline against Borges was straight sets.
The match itself was less comfortable than that suggests.
Sinner required tiebreaks to win both of the opening sets before finally taking the third 6–4. Borges kept the sets close, protected his service games and forced the champion to remain precise during the most important points.
That Sinner won both tiebreaks should encourage him.
Champions need to dominate decisive moments even when they cannot dominate the entire match.
His ability to raise the quality of his returns and groundstrokes at the end of each set showed why he is ranked above everybody else.
Yet two early tiebreaks also underline the danger.
One return clipped into the net.
One first serve missed.
One forehand drifting long.
That could have turned a straight-sets victory into another long afternoon.
Grass compresses the difference between comfort and alarm.
Sinner has handled that pressure so far.
The tournament will keep testing it.
Alcaraz’s Absence Changes Everything
The absence of Carlos Alcaraz has removed the one player who would have begun Wimbledon with an equally convincing claim to the title.
Alcaraz had won Wimbledon twice and brought a combination of movement, improvisation and confidence that made him uniquely dangerous on grass. His withdrawal with a wrist injury left a visible hole in the men’s tournament.
For Sinner, that is both an advantage and a burden.
The advantage is obvious.
His greatest contemporary rival is not standing between him and the trophy.
The burden is that the tournament now feels like his to lose.
There is no obvious equal favourite absorbing the pressure.
Every difficult set becomes more noticeable. Every dropped serve creates questions. Every opponent enters the match understanding that removing Sinner could completely transform the draw.
That can create freedom for the challenger.
Nobody expects him to win.
Everything he produces becomes a bonus.
Sinner, meanwhile, is expected to treat every round as an administrative task until the trophy presentation.
Wimbledon rarely works like that.
Djokovic Still Owns the Knowledge Nobody Else Has
Novak Djokovic remains the most obvious threat in Sinner’s half of the draw.
The seven-time champion is chasing a record 25th Grand Slam singles title and may view Wimbledon as his best remaining opportunity to achieve it. He and Sinner were placed in the same half, creating the possibility of a meeting before the final.
Sinner is younger.
He is currently stronger over a full season.
He would probably enter a meeting as favourite.
But Djokovic understands Centre Court in a way no active player can match.
He understands how the surface changes across the fortnight.
He knows when to conserve energy, when to attack the second serve and when to make an opponent play one more uncomfortable volley.
Most importantly, he knows what pressure does to favourites.
Djokovic may no longer possess the physical certainty of his peak years, but a Wimbledon match against him is never purely physical.
It becomes psychological.
The crowd changes.
The rallies change.
The opponent begins thinking about history.
Sinner has beaten Djokovic on major stages before and defeated him during his 2025 Wimbledon title run.
That does not make the rematch simple.
Experience does not guarantee victory.
It does guarantee that Djokovic will understand every moment before it arrives.
The Draw Is Open, Not Empty
It would be easy to describe this Wimbledon as Sinner against the field.
That would be a mistake.
Alexander Zverev is the second seed and arrived after winning the French Open, although his Wimbledon record remains far less convincing than his performances on other surfaces. He has never progressed beyond the fourth round at the All England Club.
Taylor Fritz has the serve and flat groundstrokes to become dangerous if he builds momentum.
Ben Shelton can overwhelm opponents with raw power.
Alexander Bublik is unpredictable but technically suited to grass when his concentration survives.
Then there are the players whose names may not dominate the build-up but whose games can become extremely unpleasant over best-of-five sets.
Big servers.
Low-ball specialists.
Players willing to attack the net.
Players who refuse to provide rhythm.
Sinner is better than most of them at almost everything.
That does not mean he will enjoy facing them.
Wimbledon has always allowed specialists to remain dangerous longer than their overall ranking might suggest.
The Surface Rewards Courage
Grass rewards players who commit.
A cautious second serve is attacked.
A hesitant approach shot sits up.
A returner who stands too far behind the baseline can watch the ball skid away before the point has properly started.
This is not a surface where uncertainty can be hidden.
Sinner’s greatest strength is that his technique usually allows him to commit without losing control.
He hits close to the lines without appearing reckless. He takes the ball early without looking rushed.
But the players capable of troubling him will attempt to remove that control.
They will shorten the rallies.
They will serve into his body.
They will use slices to keep the ball low and force him to generate his own pace.
They will attack the net before he can establish the baseline patterns that normally suffocate opponents.
Some will fail spectacularly.
One may not.
That is the threat every favourite carries through Wimbledon.
Sinner Is Still the Best Pick
None of these concerns change the central prediction.
Sinner remains the man to beat.
His second-round performance showed improvement. He handled two tiebreaks with authority, completed the match in straight sets and avoided the physical cost of another five-set battle.
He is the defending champion.
He is the top-ranked player.
The rival most likely to match him over an entire tournament is absent.
His returning is strong enough to neutralise big servers, while his own serve has improved enough to prevent opponents attacking him constantly.
He has fewer obvious weaknesses than anybody left in the men’s draw.
That makes him the correct favourite.
It does not make him inevitable.
Wimbledon Does Not Believe in Inevitability
The mistake with dominant players is assuming tournaments unfold according to quality alone.
They do not.
Weather intervenes.
Matches move between courts.
A roof closes.
The grass becomes worn.
An opponent catches fire.
A champion wakes up with pain in a foot, shoulder or back and suddenly spends the afternoon negotiating with his own body.
Sinner’s preparation was already less complete than ideal after limited grass-court competition before Wimbledon. His opening five-set match revealed some rust before the more controlled victory over Borges.
He may now move through the tournament without another serious alarm.
That is entirely possible.
The greater likelihood, however, is that grass asks him at least one more difficult question.
Perhaps against a fearless server.
Perhaps against Djokovic.
Perhaps in a final where the other man plays with nothing to lose.
Sinner looks like the player most equipped to answer.
But certainty is a dangerous emotion at Wimbledon.
The surface is too quick.
The sets are too narrow.
The margins are too cruel.
Jannik Sinner is the best player in the draw and the strongest choice to lift the trophy again.
He may even make it look obvious by the end.
Just do not expect the grass to let him reach that ending without first making him doubt it.