'I like to dance in the pressure storm,' Jannik Sinner says ... and he did just that in his Australian Open triumph

“I’m going to try even harder next time,” a brave-faced Daniil Medvedev said as he finished his runner-up speech after losing 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 to Jannik Sinner in the Australian Open final on Sunday night.

Is it possible for him to do more than he did?

Medvedev tried as hard and put his mind and body through as much as anyone ever has in a single tournament. He played 31 sets, the most by any player at a Grand Slam in the Open Era. In his second match, against Emil Ruusuvuori, he was down two sets to love, and later starting to cramp, but he won in five. In his quarterfinal against Hubert Hurkacz, he looked dead on his feet by the end of the fourth, and was just trying to conserve energy at the start of the fifth—but he found a way to win that one, too. In his semifinal against Alexander Zverev, Medvedev trailed two sets to love to an opponent who appeared to be in much better form. But he wriggled his way through two tiebreaks, and was the fresher player in the fifth.

After each of those wins, Medvedev said he was “physically destroyed.” The day before the final, he went on court to practice and found himself struggling just to take a step.

“I was like, ‘Damn, how I’m going to play the final, how I’m going to move,’” he said.

Twenty-four hours later, Medvedev was not only moving, he was putting on his most cunning and intrepid performance yet, one that nearly snuck him into his second Slam title.

Knowing that he had played six more sets than Sinner, he came out and pulled a tactical 180 on the 22-year-old. Medvedev usually likes to stand far back and retrieve, but on Sunday he stepped up to the baseline on his returns, took the ball as early as he could, and went on the attack. Medvedev approached the net twice as many times as Sinner (45 to 21) and hit nearly as many winners (50 to 44) as one of the game’s biggest ball-strikers.

“I knew there was still going to be long points,” Medvedev said, “but I needed to make the points as short at possible, take his time, and it was working well.”

The Russian’s reversal sent Sinner reeling. By the second set, the normally imperturbable Italian was holding his palms up toward his coaches, as if to ask, “Now what do I do?” What he did, after losing the first two sets, was what Medvedev so often does: He hung around, weathered the storm, cut down on his errors, and took his chances when they (finally) presented themselves.

“I had this feeling that he might come out a little bit more aggressive,” Sinner said. “Not this aggressive. He played really, really well for the first two or two and a half sets.”

“I tried just to play even level, trying to take a couple of chances in the third set. When you win one very important game, the match can change ... and that was the case today.”

It may sound ironic, but one of the crueler aspects of tennis is how much control it gives you over your own fate. It’s wonderful when you find a way to win, of course; you can say you did it all yourself. The downside is that when you lose a close match, there’s always something you can look back on and regret. Even if your opponent was better, there’s always a shot or two that, if you had made them, could have led to a different result.

On Sunday, Medvedev, despite all of his valiant play, made two match-changing errors, and one match-ending choice.

At 4-4 in the third set, he reached deuce on Sinner’s serve; he was two points from serving for the title. Judging from his next forehand, he knew it. Instead of swinging freely, as he had been, Medvedev tightened up just a bit and sent the ball long. Sinner held, and then broke to win the third.

At 3-3 in the fourth set, Medvedev went up 0-30 on Sinner’s serve. Again, the champion’s cup loomed a little larger inside Rod Laver Arena. Maybe Medvedev noticed it. At 15-30, he stepped into a backhand, but he looked indecisive about how hard to hit it, and the ball floated harmlessly long. Sinner held and eventually won that set.

Fast forward to the final game. Now it was Sinner’s turn to tighten up. Serving for the title at 5-3, he went up 30-0, and then gave away two points with errors. At 30-30, Medvedev, instead of moving up close to the baseline to return, the way he had earlier, retreated to his traditional spot farther back. This meant, when Sinner made his first serve and stepped in for a forehand, Medvedev was stuck well behind the baseline, and left out of position for a pass. At the moment of maximum pressure in the match, Sinner was given the time and space to hit a safe forehand approach. One point later, he was flat on his back, a new Slam champion.

Afterwards, Medvedev tried to figure out why his lead had slipped away. How much of it was nerves, and how much was exhaustion? He wasn’t sure, but he hoped it was the latter.

“The only thing I ask myself, ‘Did I keep this aggression or lose it in the third?'” Medvedev wondered. “Even if I lost it, I would connect it to physical level, which is better than mental level, if you become scared and try to retain the ball a little.

“I felt like in my mind I was still going full, but the body was a little bit worse.”

All of that said, Medvedev didn’t lose this match, Sinner won it. He won it by stepping forward at a crucial time in each of the last three sets. Late in the third, he cracked two penetrating forehands to reach set point. In the fourth, he saved a break point by taking his time, letting the shot clock run down to zero, and firing an ace up the T when Medvedev was looking for one out wide. In the fifth, Sinner survived a 39-shot rally, and then, with his nerves jangling down the stretch, he finished a 27-shot rally with a killer forehand. He closed the match in a fittingly jaw-dropping way, with a go-for-broke forehand that landed a few inches inside the baseline.

“I like to dance in the pressure storm,” Sinner said, possibly coining a phrase. “I like it, because that’s where most of the time I bring out my best tennis.”

For Sinner’s co-coach, Darren Cahill, the fifth set of a Slam final is where you find out how deep your reserves go.

“You just have to force yourself to push through those moments to come up with the big shots and believe and be brave through those moments,” Cahill said. “Once you get to a fourth or fifth set, it really just becomes about what lies inside you.

“He had the answers inside him.”

This was the first Australian Open final not to feature a member of the Big 3 since 2005. Back then, Facebook was still called The Facebook, and Barack Obama had just been sworn in ... as a senator. But this match more than lived up to the legacy of those legends, and promises a smoother transition into a new era than we might have thought possible.

Medvedev deserves better. His performance was championship-worthy, and whatever he said in his post-match speech, he couldn’t have tried any harder.

In the end, though, Sinner’s performance was just a little braver. Now we know there’s no bottom to his mental and physical reserves, and no ceiling for his career.