10 of the best wins from match point down in 2022: No 1: Alcaraz beats Sinner, US Open quarter-finals
Players won from match point down on 140 occasions in 2022. Here’s the first in our 10-part series looking at their great escapes
Antoine Couvercelle / Panoramic
In 2022, a total of 140 matches on the ATP/WTA Tours were won from match point down; 81 on the men’s side and 59 on the women’s side. Two men – Jannik Sinner and Dominic Thiem – did it four times while two women – Petra Kvitova and Jessica Pegula managed it on a Tour-topping three occasions.
Tennis Majors has picked out 10 of the best of those 140 matches, where one player escaped from the jaws of defeat to claim an unlikely victory.
No 1: US Open fourth round: Carlos Alcaraz beats Jannik Sinner 6-3, 6-7 (7), 6-7 (0), 7-5, 6-3
This one had it all; incredible tennis, drama and the latest finish in US Open history as the two players finally finished up at 2.50am after five hours, 15 minutes, the second-longest match in the event’s history.
Sinner had beaten Alcaraz in two previous battles earlier in the year, at Wimbledon and in Umag, and when he held match point at 5-4 in the fourth set, it looked like he’d complete another. But Alcaraz saved it thanks to a brave return which forced Sinner to pull a backhand wide.
Alcaraz went on to take the fourth set but found himself a break down in the fifth, only to rally yet again, winning the last four games of the match for a record-breaking win. Two wins later, he was the US Open champion, the youngest world No 1 in men’s history.
Speaking later, Juan Carlos Ferrero, the coach of Alcaraz and a former world No 1 himself, said he might just have seen the future.
“The other day I said to someone in the press that maybe Sinner and Carlos could dominate the tour for maybe the next 10 years, from what I saw, the level that I saw the other day,” Ferrero said.
