ATP Tour

Sinner starts a winner, but with a little tidy-up to do

Jannik Sinner made a winning start to his 2024 season on Sunday’s historic opening day of play at the Australian Open, but the Italian is unlikely to be fully satisfied with his straight-sets win over powerful Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp.

Playing his first match since leading Italy to last year’s Davis Cup title, Sinner made 22 unforced forehand errors and suffered a bizarre slump at the beginning of the third before eventually running out a 6-4, 7-5, 6-3 victor in two hours and 34 minutes.

"It's never easy playing the first match of the season, so I'm happy to get the win and now I have two days of practice to get better," Sinner said.

Cheered on by a healthy number of Carota Boys who have made the trip Down Under, Sinner could face another Dutchman in the second round as he awaits the winner of Netherlands qualifier Jesper De Jong and Argentine Pedro Cachin.

Just as Sinner looked to be cruising to victory, World No. 59 Van de Zandschulp fought off four break points in the opening game of the third set to hold serve and then broke the fourth seed to love to take a 2-0 lead. But that only served to jar into action Sinner, who responded with a four-game winning streak to regain control of their first Lexus ATP Head2Head match-up.

Forza 🇮🇹@janniksin gets past van de Zandschulp 6-4 7-5 6-3 to secure a spot in the second round in Melbourne.

@AustralianOpen | #AusOpen pic.twitter.com/bOF0G53c5o

— ATP Tour (@atptour) January 14, 2024

In addition to cleaning up his unforced error count in his next match, Sinner will be looking to improve his serve, which underpinned his banner season in 2023 after a mid-season adjustment. Against Van de Zandschulp Sinner put just 58 per cent of first serves into play and won a modest 69 per cent of first-serve points.

Outwardly, the 2023 Nitto ATP Finals runner-up didn't seem overly concerned about a messy stats sheet when speaking to media in his post-match press conference..

“I feel like I started off actually really well, for the first match," Sinner said. "Then I had some moments where I made a couple of wrong choices, but this can happen… To be honest, it was a positive opening match. I feel like best-of-five can help me a little bit. You stay on court a little bit longer. You get to play a little bit longer, which is what I like to do. Then we see in the next rounds what's coming."

Sinner, who reached the fourth round at Melbourne Park last year and the quarter-finals in 2022, enters this year's tournament at a career-high No. 4 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.