Jannik Sinner dominates fellow fast-riser Emil Ruusuvuori in Miami

To say that Jannik Sinner is “quietly making his way” through a draw seems unnecessary. Does this tight-lipped, cool-headed Italian teen make his way through a draw any other way?

Still, Sinner has been living and playing even farther below the radar than usual over the last week in Miami. While Frances Tiafoe has lit up the night sessions there, and Daniil Medvedev hobbled his way to the second week in memorable fashion, Sinner has yet to appear in the main Grandstand court or make any waves with this words. He hasn’t even been the most celebrated 19-year-old in the men’s draw. So far that honor has gone to Sebastian Korda.

But judged by the standards of today’s men’s game, where a young player can take 10 years to fulfill his potential, this has been a week of meteoric progress for the 19-year-old. Sinner has reached his first quarterfinal in just his third Masters 1000 event, and in a grueling, three-set second-round match, he got some revenge on the man who knocked him out of the US Open last year, Karen Khachanov. On Tuesday, Sinner asserted his superiority over another fast-rising player, 21-year-old Emil Ruusuvuori, in a little over an hour, 6-3, 6-2. Sinner is currently ranked No. 31 and could crack the Top 25 with another win this week.

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Sinner’s match with Ruusuvuori, who hit Alexander Zverev off the court a few days ago, could be described as a battle of the Next Nexts. If this is indeed the future of the men’s game, it will be played cleanly, aggressively, and silently. The only time I heard either player speak was when Sinner said “Thanks” to the chair umpire for warning him that he was close to going over the allotted 25 seconds to serve. I guess you can add “politely” to my list of descriptions of the sport’s future above. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a player thank an umpire for anything, and it was frankly refreshing.

Sinner and Ruusuvuori have no wasted motion in their ground strokes. Despite their rail-thin bodies, they can hit their forehands in the triple digits, and can get nearly as much pace on their two-handed backhands. Unlike Zverev, they don’t back off the baseline and play passively; and unlike Stefanos Tsitsipas, they don’t use up energy or go through emotional ups and downs over the course of a match. Each showed an ability to follow their big shots to the net and put the way ball away with the same uncluttered technique that they use from the ground. This was tennis for the no-drama future that Hawk-Eye Live is in the process of ushering in—though ironically Miami’s Hawk-Eye Live system wasn’t working for this match, so they had to go back to a skeleton crew of linespeople. Sinner and Ruusuvuori, not surprisingly, didn’t raise a fuss about any of their calls.

Afterward, Sinner was similarly polite in his assessment of his win, pointing out that Ruusuvuori had played three straight three-setters in Miami before today.

“Every day is different,” he told Tennis Channel’s Prakash Amritraj. “Knowing him, he’s coming from some tough matches. He should be a little tired as well. Today the [cooler] temperature, it’s obviously better for me like this. But I think I played well today so I’m very happy.”

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Sinner also said he thinks it’s important to a set marker for the future against opponents who are nearly as young as he is. He had lost his previous meeting with Ruusuvuori.

“I enjoy playing these matches,” Sinner said, “if I’m going to keep my ranking or improve in the next years, normally I should play them many more times.”

The Italian tennis stars of the past—Adriano Pannatta, Francesca Schiavone, Fabio Fognini—have been theatrical, to put it mildly, and 19-year-old Lorenzo Musetti looks set to continue that tradition. Sinner is…not that. Which shouldn’t be surprising, considering that, like the similarly mild-mannered Andreas Seppi, he hails from the northern tip of the country, on the snowy border with Austria (Sinner’s parents’ names are Hanspeter and Siglinde).

But while Sinner’s path through the draw has been muted in Miami, it may the most important harbinger for the sport’s future we’ll see this spring. If you like your tennis clean, lethal, and polite, you’ll welcome his quietly meteoric rise.