A beautiful but not epic match between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz due to a noticeable drop in the Italian’s performance over distance.

However, the Spaniard played a remarkable match from many points of view in the second and third sets; let’s now look at some statistical keys of the big match at Indian Wells.

Pre-match odds

We rely, as we usually do, on Tennis_insights for metrics related to the quality of shots; after the first rounds, Sinner was clearly the most effective in terms of forehand and backhand while Alcaraz stood out in his ability to take the initiative from the opponent (steal score), usually the daily bread and butter of Daniil Medvedev.

Narrowing the focus to the two contenders of the first semifinal, Sinner and Alcaraz, the feeling was that there was a clear favorite today, namely Jannik:

First set

The first fraction seemed to confirm the trend that was expected for the match; that of a very solid Jannik who was scoring points by playing at a high pace. Alcaraz, on the other hand, found great difficulty in implementing a tactical scheme that could divert Sinner from his comfort zone.

A Sinner who, as can be seen, was decidedly more aggressive, managing to get into an attacking situation in 29% of cases with an excellent conversion rate of these advantage situations (76%).

In the first set, service and forehand clearly betrayed the Spaniard who failed to unleash his brilliant game and indeed was very deficient in short exchange situations.

As known in modern tennis, exchanges of fewer than 5 shots usually dominate, and seeing Sinner winning three times the number of points than Alcaraz in this situation clearly leaves no room for doubt about the set’s trend.

Second set

The second set saw the tide of the Italian receding and the powerful return of the Spaniard. This fact is evident from how the Murcia native reversed the momentum and took command of operations, leading in 28% of exchanges although with a not excellent conversion rate (54%). Carlitos had maintained a 75% rate during the tournament. It’s true that the opponents of the first rounds cannot be compared to Sinner, but in any case, it is a significant data. Although Jannik’s ability to turn defense into attack is remarkable, Alcaraz’s conversion rate remains low.

If we want to change the perspective, we can say that the complementary metric, the steal score, shows that Jannik managed to win 46% of the points from defensive situations. A practically off-scale data since even 40% is the creme de la creme.

That Alcaraz took the initiative in the exchanges is clear in the performance on short exchanges where he overtakes Sinner’s statistic in this department (14 points to 11).

Clearly, a similar statistic on short exchanges requires adequate support from service and forehand, which indeed came to the Spaniard’s aid:

Another aspect that caught the eye is Carlitos’s quality in response, but we will talk about this at the end. Suffice it to say that the response data went from 8 to 9.7 in the metrics we are now used to seeing on the official ATP channels. And this quality obviously translated into a significantly lower service effectiveness for Jannik compared to the first set and also compared to the rest of the tournament.

To understand how Sinner then suffered the break in the second set, we find the reason in the distribution of first serves in the set and how these were not exploited in the fourth game.

As can be seen, only two first serves in the field in the 4th game with only one point won. However, in general, in the second set when Jannik got the first in, he achieved good results with quite extreme use of the wide serve.

Alcaraz’s choices, on the other hand, were much more focused on varying and mixing up his approach.

For those interested, here is the detail of the choices and results obtained by Alcaraz on the first serve in the second set (which turned out to be crucial):

Third set

The third set ultimately had little to say; it seemed to mirror what happened in the first set. Jannik was clearly betrayed by his two main shots, serve and forehand. Already in the first game, Jannik exposed his flank and managed to get a meager two first serves in out of eight.

In the end, in that first game, the Italian managed to save himself, but it was just the prologue to an announced end at that point. Jannik still tried and attempted to stay aggressive. Up to the fifth game, and after having to effectively surrender with the double break, the interesting fact is that Sinner had maintained the momentum of the exchanges, only then failing to deliver the decisive blow due to mounting forehand errors.

33% was indeed the lowest conversion score we have seen recorded for Sinner in at least the past 6 months.

Conclusions

We saw a fluctuating course of the match. In the first set, Alcaraz had the terrible idea of playing a pinball game, a specialty in which Sinner excels. In the following sets, however, he found the humility to vary and annoy Sinner with strategies that did not allow him to consistently produce heavy shots, managing both to defend well and to accelerate with great solutions. But such a result, in our opinion, by looking more deeply into the match, can also be traced back to a couple of aspects.

Sinner was not able to produce his game from the center of the court as usual.

In their 3 meetings in 2023, we have that: Indian Wells ’23 – Alcaraz deprives Sinner of the opportunities to play from the center Miami ’23 – The opportunities and effectiveness of Sinner increase Beijing ’23 – Sinner creates with even greater frequency and effectiveness What happened today at Indian Wells ’24?

Unlike the last encounters in which Sinner emerged victorious, in the Indian Wells ’24 semi-final, the Spaniard did not allow the Italian to exploit this game situation. Another way to see it is to look at the “normal” forehands (those played from the forehand side, thus excluding unusual inside-in and inside-out shots).

Carlos position on court on return of serve

Finally, one last aspect that surely caught the eye of viewers last night was Alcaraz’s return position, very different from his usual. The graph shows the forehands that are played during the exchange in which neither of the two is in a clear situation of attack or defense. These are classified as rally exchange shots. Sinner is examined, and the data in blue is against Alcaraz, the orange one is the average over 52 weeks, and the pink data is the tour average.

The amount of forehands played into the net by Jannik, three times higher than his average over 52 weeks, stands out, indicating that the shot was definitely missing.

The number in blue shows the percentage of responses hit in various areas of the field, the data in orange is Sinner’s average over 52 weeks, while the pink data is the tour average. It’s impressive to see how those hit in the most retracted area of the field, at least 2 meters behind the baseline, in a Medvedev style, to understand, are 100%. Do you know what Carlitos’s average was in the tournament? About 30%. In practice, the Spaniard completely overturned his usual game plan.

This response strategy, combined with the Spaniard’s ability to implement a tactic that enveloped Sinner, has paid off dramatically. If we look at Sinner’s service performance, we see that compared to the tournament average, the effectiveness is much lower.

The easy points, the so-called cheap points from the serve, were much fewer: aces and serves that were not returned went from 45% to a meager 27%. As highlighted earlier, this lesser dominance on the serve then translated into greater difficulty in closing out. Despite a great first set, in the end, the Italian finished with a conversion score more than 20% lower than the rest of the tournament.