Predictable Brilliance

When predictable brilliance just isn’t enough.

The tennis rivalry between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz is already taking on classic proportions and looks to have the potential to become even more epic. In the last two years they have won all eight grand slam events between them, claiming four each.

One of the intriguing things about the rivalry so far is that Alcaraz looks like the Kryptonite to Sinner’s superman. Sinner’s machine like efficiency and consistency had seen him be world number one for over a year. It seems that he is simply too good for the other players, except Alcaraz. In his last fifty matches, Sinner has won forty seven of them, all three losses in that time have come to Alcaraz. 

When you look back to since the start of 2024 numbers are just as staggering: 

Sinner's win-loss record	Against others	Against Alcaraz
Overall	109-4	1-7
On hard courts	68-1	0-4
In Grand Slams	48-1	1-3

Numbers like that are difficult to argue with, clearly Alcaraz has Sinner’s number at the moment when the two of them face each other. Only Sinner’s consistency against the other players had kept him ahead of the Spaniard in the rankings – until Alcaraz’s victory of Sinner in the US Open final meant that he finally overtook him to become world number one. 

What is more interesting is the story behind the numbers. Better tennis experts than me would be able to look at style of play and how their relative games ‘match up’ and how Alcaraz can ‘hurt’ Sinner in ways that other players cannot. What I found fascinating after the US Open, was that in his speech Sinner made reference to his game maybe needing to be less predictable. This made me think of the old sport adage of if your opponent can’t stop what you are doing, then keep doing it until they can. Being predictable is not a problem, if your opponent cannot stop you doing what you are doing, even though they know what’s coming. 

Sinner even spoke of risking losing more matches throughout the year, in order to be more difficult for Alcaraz to beat in the big finals. In this day and age of having so much of every performance ‘on film’ and data analysts everywhere you look in elite sport, then the predictability can become more of a problem if someone does not only work out how to counteract what you do, but have the ability to execute that plan.

This can flare up in team sports as well. When a team has a clear philosophy, and a predictable way of playing it can be their greatest strength but also possibly their greatest weakness if another team is good enough to expose it. Perhaps this can go some way to explain why Pep Guardiola’s teams at Bayern Munich and Manchester City dominated their domestic leagues but have only managed one Champions league wins between them in ten years. The majority of the teams in the Bundesliga and the Premier league could not stop Pep’s teams, even if they knew exactly what they were going to do. Whereas perhaps sooner or later in the Champions League they came up against a team that was good enough to beat them over two legs, because they knew how City or Bayern were going to play. 

In American Football, the history of the NFL is littered with high powered offenses that blew their opponents away with high scores during the regular season, only for them to come unstuck in the play-offs or the Superbowl itself. After showing the whole league what they do for a full season, they come up against a team with a defence that is good enough to stop them. That gives a possible explanation for the old adage of ‘offence wins games, but defence wins championships.’

Teams and individuals throughout sport have to try and find that balance between having their philosophy and keeping their opponent guessing as to what they might do next. As Edward G Robinson says to Steve McQueen in the Poker based film The Cincinnati Kid – ‘Get down to what it’s all about, making the wrong move at the right time.’

Maybe to beat Alcaraz, Sinner has to make some ‘wrong’ moves.  

This article was written by Rob Watson, a sports writer contributing to Quick Set Sports

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