Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner go five in Paris, and all of the best 2024 ATP Grand Slam matches

The 2024 tennis season was filled with noteworthy stories, breakthrough moments, and countless trophy lifts. But what were the best matches of the year that was?

We rolled the tape, and this week, TENNIS.com counted down some of the best ATP matches of the past year (after counting down our WTA picks last week). Our countdown continues with the best Grand Slam matches of the season, and will conclude Friday with our overall Top 5 matches of the year. But who else stood out the most on the major stage?

5. Grigor Dimitrov def. Andrey Rublev, US Open R4

Two best friends, one big battle. The burgeoning "bromance" between Grigor Dimitrov and Andrey Rubev has had its share of laughs, smiles, and quotable quotes over the years, but when the pair met with a spot in the US Open quarterfinals on the line, a five-setter was added to the pair's all-time head-to-head annals for the first time.

A match that looked straightforward for Dimitrov, who had won the pair's only previous Grand Slam meeting back in 2018, soon turned into anything but. The Bulgarian raced out to a two-sets-to-love lead (which included a rally from 5-3 down to win the second), but Rublev, who had reached the US Open quarterfinals three times in the last four years, hit back by taking sets three and four to set the winner-take-all final frame.

But Dimitrov had the answers in the end, securing a 6-3, 7-6(3), 1-6, 3-6, 6-3 victory that was the 450th win of his career, and his 300th on hard courts. A break in the fourth game of the fifth set was all he needed, eventually serving it out after three hours and 39 minutes on court.

“I think after the first couple of sets, he started playing amazing," Dimitrov said. "I mean, there's not much else I could have done. I felt so I had to pull the reins back a little bit and wait for an opportunity. I knew eventually I might get one throughout the fourth and the fifth, and it happened in the fifth. So I think that was the big difference today, and after that, I ran with the match, but it was very, very challenging.”

Unfortunately for the Bulgarian, his New York renaissance was cut short in the next round, as he was forced to retire against Frances Tiafoe with a groin injury.

4. Daniil Medvedev def. Hubert Hurkacz, Australian Open QF

Entering the 2024 Australian Open, Daniil Medvedev had only twice lost before the semifinals at a hard-court major dating back to the 2020 US Open. But to keep his streak going, he needed to navigate past an in-form opponent who was riding high on momentum not just in the early season, but against him. The former world No. 1 had lost his last two matches to Hubert Hurkacz, who came into Melbourne after finishing runner-up at the United Cup with Iga Swiatek and inside the world's Top 10, but in a blip under four hours, Medvedev scored his first win over the Pole since 2021, 7-6(4), 2-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4.

Medvedev had already played a five-set match in the second round against Emil Ruusuvuori, and there was no reason to think the same outcome was on the horizon as he squeaked past the big server in a first-set tiebreak, and found himself two games away from a win in the fourth set. But Hurkacz captured four of five games to send the match the distance. Looking fatigued as the decider got underway, Medvedev nonetheless stayed within himself and capitalized on his opening when it arrived.

But seeds of what was to come for the Russian later in the tournament were already sown: Medvedev admitted afterwards that the match left him "destroyed."

"Not that I ran out of gas, but I was feeling very tough physically in the end of the second set already," he confessed on-court to John McEnroe.

"Fourth set, I just [had] no more concentration and I'm like, 'OK, I have to try my best to do whatever I can and let's see. If I lose, I lose, I go home and it's OK.' I'm happy that like this I managed to win."

It was the second of four five-setters that Medvedev now-famously played in Melbourne, as he also went the distance in the semifinals against Alexander Zverev and the final versus Jannik Sinner.

3. Jannik Sinner def. Matteo Berrettini, Wimbledon R2

When the men's draw at SW19 was made in full, all eyes were locked on how newly-crowned world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who ascended to the top ranking just weeks prior, would handle an early surface specialist standing between him and a possible semifinal clash against Carlos Alcaraz for the second consecutive Grand Slam event.

That grass-court titan was none other than his fellow Italian, Matteo Berrettini, who was the finalist at the All England Club just three years earlier, and a winner at Queen's and Stuttgart twice. After six months out with a foot injury, Berrettini's season picked up steam in the early days of the clay-court season by winning two titles in a row, before missing the big ones in Madrid, Rome and Roland Garros as a result of an illness

Read more: Matteo Berrettini talks 'fashion icon' Jannik Sinner: "He really is so natural"

The two countrymen, of different generations, you could argue, had only played once previously: a straight-sets win for Sinner in Canada in 2023. With Sinner now perched at the top of the rankings, another win was on the cards for the younger of the two, but it was much less straightforward.

With Berrettini's serve firing on his favored surface (Sinner only broke him twice, but lost serve himself four times), Sinner came from a .

"First of all, we are very good friends," Sinner said. "We played Davis Cup together and we practice together, so it is very very tough we had to face in the second round in such an important tournament. Today was a very high-level match. In three tie-breaks I got a little bit lucky and I take it for today."

2. Frances Tiafoe def. Ben Shelton, US Open R3

It's often said that sequels are never as good as the original. Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton, though, either had never heard of that old adge or actively ignored it when they took the court at the US Open for the second year in a row.

In 2023, Shelton defeated Tiafoe in a four-set quarterfinal, the first-ever meeting between two Black American men at their home Slam. The reprise featured one more set, and a different winner, as Tiafoe rallied for a 4-6, 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-3 third-round victory in more than four hours.

The elder of the two Americans kicked his year into gear in the aftermath of a five-set loss to Carlos Alcaraz at Wimbledon, one of our comebacks of the year. But even before that, Tiafoe was tired of, in his own words, “losing to clowns.” He built off that loss to Alcaraz to the point where by the time he and Shelton were facing off all-too-early in Arthur Ashe Stadium, both men were close to peak of their respective powers.

That combination created the most memorable matches of the first week, delivering a combined 107 winners in just over four hours on court, but Tiafoe’s cumulative experience took him over the finish line in five.

“Ben's an incredible player, man, and he comes up with the goods a lot. It was definitely a tough match,” Tiafoe said. “But I think, I'm not just saying this because we just spoke in the locker room, but I think the level was a lot higher this year than we played last year throughout the five sets.”

Tiafoe went on to reach the semifinals for the second time in three years, where he came up just short in a heartbreaker to fellow American Taylor Fritz.

1. Carlos Alcaraz def. Jannik Sinner, Roland Garros SF

The last time that Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz played at a Grand Slam tournament before 2024, at the 2022 US Open, they combined to play a titantic five-hour, five-setter under the lights inside Arthur Ashe Stadium that finished at 2:50 a.m. in a new latest-ever tournament record.

How could they possibly follow that up on Paris' terre battue, a spot in the Roland Garros final at stake? Though an hour shorter, the reprise was no less thrilling, and Alcaraz came from two-sets-to-one down to win, 2-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, in four hours and nine minutes.

The win, Alcaraz's second of three against Sinner in 2024, was even sweeter after the Spaniard famously succumbed to a bout of cramps in a four-sett loss to Novak Djokovic in the same round a year earlier.

"I told myself that it's gonna be a long match. It is a Grand Slam, that he had to win two more sets. So it was going to be a long match, so I have to stay positive, to stay there," Alcaraz later said.

While Alcaraz cut a frustrated figure early on as Sinner dominated the first set, Alcaraz summarized things in the post-match press room as "high intensity." He struck nearly double Sinner's total of winners, 65 to 39, and an early break of Sinner's serve in the fifth set gave Alcaraz a lead he never relinquished, despite Sinner's best efforts.

Read more: Alcaraz and Sinner’s ninth meeting started slowly, but they gave us what we wanted in the end

“I’m going to say the key was that I took my chances that Jannik brought to me in the match,” the Spaniard said. “The break points that I had, I took it. In the fifth set, the first break point that I had, I took it.”

Sinner's post-match takeaways, in hindsight, gave a fascinating look into how the Italian approached the second-half of the year in what became a historic season.

“For sure the sets he won he played better in the important points, no?” Sinner said. “I think that was the key. Obviously disappointed how it ended, but, you know, it’s part of my growing.”

Alcaraz, as we know now, also escaped Alexander Zverev in the final from two-sets-to-one down to become the youngest man to capture Grand Slam titles on the three playing surfaces.