ATP Tour

Jannik Sinner heads indoors to practise while awaiting MRI result

World No. 1 Jannik Sinner headed indoors to practise on hard courts Tuesday as he awaited the results of an MRI on his injured elbow ahead of tomorrow’s Wimbledon quarter-final with American Ben Shelton.

Co-coaches Simone Vagnozzi and Darren Cahill fed Sinner some balls during a light 20-30 minute session, with Cahill later providing his ESPN colleagues with a guarded update of the Italian’s condition.

“No news on the MRI just yet,” Cahill said early evening on set. “He had it earlier today and he can’t take a day off, so he wanted to touch the ball… So Simone and myself just fed him a few balls out of the basket.

“It’s not a bad thing sometimes [to practise on hard court]. The more you play on grass with the uneven bounces, the more your timing goes off… Agassi used to do it all the time… We’ve done that for a couple of years, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary.”

In the first game of Monday’s fourth-round matchup against Grigor Dimitrov, Sinner slipped on the grass and cushioned the fall with his right arm. He later received a medical timeout for treatment on his elbow.

Sitting in the player’s box, Cahill was comforted to see his charge flash a quick thumbs up, but it became apparent that the fall had inflicted some level of damage.

“We actually thought he’d hurt his wrist at the start,” Cahill said. “But he did bang the elbow on the ground and he felt his elbow throughout the entire match. And it was pretty sore afterwards.

“He lost about six or seven miles per hour on average speed off the forehand, and off the serve as well.

“But I don’t want to take anything away from Grigor because he played an amazing match for a couple of sets and even had a couple of chances in the third. What happened to him was a travesty.”

Dimitrov led Sinner 6-3, 7-5, 2-2 when he collapsed to the ground in pain with a pectoral injury after serving an ace out wide to the deuce court.

Sinner, who will remain No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings regardless of who wins Wimbledon, is eyeing his first final at the All England Club after reaching the quarter-finals for the fourth consecutive year. In 2024 he fell to Daniil Medvedev at this stage.

Should he improve his 5-1 Lexus ATP Head2Head record against Shelton Wednesday, Sinner’s path to the title might run through Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals and great rival and two-time defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in Sunday’s final.

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Sinner, the reigning Nitto ATP Finals champion, has a 23-3 match record on the season according to the Infosys ATP Match Win/Loss Index.