Aryna Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner reclaimed their early-season form at the Cincinnati Open

“It is quite fast here,” Jannik Sinner said, summing up a week’s worth of analysis and commentary from the Cincinnati Open in five short words.

Speed was indeed the defining feature and topic of this ATP and WTA 1000 event. The court surface was given a rating of 42 by the tours’ pace rating instruments, up several notches from 2023, and significantly higher than virtually every other event, including Wimbledon. More important, perhaps, Cincy won’t be an outlier in that regard this year: The courts at the US Open are reportedly playing nearly as fast. Which means that what just happened in the flatlands of Ohio could be a preview of what happens over the next few weeks in the concrete jungle of New York.

What happened in Cincy was not all that surprising, for a few reasons. Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, two of the heaviest and most aggressive hitters on their respective tours, reclaimed the spotlight and their early-season momentum after surprising mid-year dry spells. Each began 2024 by winning the Australian Open, and Sinner reached No. 1 for the first time. But neither came away with a win at Roland Garros or Wimbledon, and both had to miss the Olympics. Now, their roads have risen together again. In the span of a week, they went from having question marks about their health to becoming, possibly, the favorites to close the season the way they started it, and win the US Open.

In the semifinals on Sunday, Sinner and Sabalenka each came away with a confidence-building, breakthrough win over a top-tier nemesis. Sabalenka put on what she called a “brilliant” performance to roll past No. 1 Iga Swiatek, a woman who held an 8-3 record against her. Sinner followed by edging Alexander Zverev in three long, brutal sets and a deciding tiebreaker. It was the Italian’s first win over the German since 2020, and his first on hard courts.

There was no letdown from either in the finals on Monday, as Sinner and Sabalenka showed how tough their lethal power and first-strike capabilities make them on courts like these.

Sabalenka led the way again, dominating Jessica Pegula for the majority of a 6-3, 7-5 win. Many of us expected a give-and-take contest between puncher and counter-puncher. But Sabalenka, the puncher, recorded a knockout instead. Her serve, her forehand, her backhand, even her drop shot: they were all too much for Pegula to handle. Sabalenka finished with 28 winners to just eight for the American, and won 31 of 34 points on her first serve.

“The first matches were really challenging, I was trying to adjust,” Sabalenka said of her early rounds in Cincy. “Something just clicked and I felt really good on this surface. Really enjoying every match, really enjoying every point.

“I got my rhythm back.”

Sinner followed with a more difficult, but perhaps more impressive, 7-6 (4), 6-2 win over Frances Tiafoe. Like Sabalenka, Sinner was the puncher, firing 29 winners to 13 from Tiafoe, and winning 85 percent of his first-serve points. Tiafoe did everything he could to push back, and made the first set a tense and entertaining toss-up. But each time he needed a point, Sinner had the goods.

Down break point at 4-4 in the first set, he put a little extra on his forehand, and drew a forehand miss from Tiafoe. Down 3-4 in the tiebreaker, Sinner again upped the velocity on his forehand and won the point. At 4-4, Sinner snapped off a short angle backhand and closed with a volley. As he has for most of this season, Sinner responded to pressure with utter calm and flawless, creative shot-making.

“I was missing some shots [in the first set], but the shot selection was right,” Sinner told Tennis Channel. “In the tiebreaker I played very solid.”

Sinner and Sabalenka, who won their first titles in Cincinnati, both talked about adjusting to the surface.

“What you can control, you have to control it in a better way,” Sinner said. “The serve, the first shot in in each point is very important.”

“You got to stay low on this surface,” Sabalenka said. “That’s a very fast one. If you go a little bit up with the body, the ball flies really, really

far in the stands. So you got to stay low, and you got to swing without any fear of missing the shot.”

Nothing to it, right?

So far it has been a summer of Djokovic, Alcaraz, Swiatek, Zheng, Krejcikova and Paolini. Will it end as a summer of Sinner and Sabalenka? They’ve zoomed from the middle of the pack to the head of it.

For all of their parallels as players this season, they do make an odd couple as personalities. Sabalenka was as ebullient as ever in victory, while Sinner was even more stone-faced than usual. His celebration consisted of him lifting his arms in the air—and then bringing them back down. Afterward, tennis Channel’s Prakash Amritraj asked them what they were going to do tonight. Sabalenka smiled and said she was going to have a margarita—more specifically, a Marg-Aryna—while Sinner said, “I’m not a guy who drinks; I’m more happy with a Coke.”

Both, though, are ready for what comes next.

“I’m happy to win the tournament before the US Open, and then we see,” said Sinner, who still may be nursing a hip problem.

Sabalenka grinned and said, “I’m going to forget about this title—in a good way.”