Two Paths to Dominance: How Alcaraz and Sinner Win Differently

There is more than one way to reach the pinnacle of tennis success

First Serve

Tennis fans have been spoiled in the post-Big3 era as the “New Two” rivalry between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner has already produced historically epic matches. Alcaraz and Sinner have won every Grand Slam singles title since the 2023 US Open, where Novak Djokovic lifted the trophy. They were so dominant in 2025 that the final ATP rankings showed the following:

#1 Carlos Alcaraz: 12,050 points

#2 Jannik Sinner: 11,500 points

#3 Alexander Zverev: 5,110 points

Sinner’s point total was more than double world number three Alexander Zverev’s, meaning that you and I (with 0 ATP points (unless any pro players are reading this, which would be awesome)) were closer in points to being number three in the world than Zverev was to being number two.

In attempting to understand the New Two’s dominance, I did a deep dive into Tennis Abstract’s incredible Match Charting Project, a crowdsourced effort breaking ATP matches down to a shot-by-shot level. The result? A whopping 181 and 185 matches (excluding retirements) for Alcaraz and Sinner respectively since 2023 with as much detail as I could possibly want in rally, serve, return, and tactical statistics.

What I found was that, while both Alcaraz and Sinner are elite across all surfaces, their tactical pathways to success are different. In essence, one needs aggression and the other does not.

The Aggression Dependency

Alcaraz thrives when he is the aggressor. Out of the 181 charted matches since 2023, Carlos’s overall win% of 82.3% can be broken down by when he is the aggressor (93% win%) and the reactor (65% win%). Now, I’ll get into this more with Sinner, but reactor is not a perfect descriptor. I struggled to find a word that encapsulated this phenomenon. Essentially, it means letting your opponent dictate and end the point on their terms, whether good or bad.

The figure below is a scatterplot displaying Alcaraz’s results based on his rally and return aggression scores. Green circles correspond to matches Carlos won, while red x’s represent losses. Rally aggression measures how often a player ends the point during rallies, whether by a winner or unforced error. It is calculated after each match by normalizing a player’s unforced error rate and winner rate relative to the tour average, taking the standard deviation above/below the mean, averaging the two numbers, and multiplying by 100. High, positive values mean a player is ending more points than their opponent and, thus, being more aggressive in the rally. Return aggression is a similar metric, except it only considers return winners and errors. Like rally aggression, return aggression is calculated using the average of the two normalized rates, multiplied by 100. The tour average for both metrics is 0.

Now for the interpretation. We can see a clear contrast in Carlos’s win% when he is the aggressor vs when he is the reactor. Over the 181 charted matches since 2023, his win% is massive 28 percentage points lower when he has both a negative rally and return aggression score compared to when both are positive. When Carlos is able to dictate in both rallies and returns, he rarely loses. However, he is vulnerable when his opponents are able to push both of his aggression scores beneath the tour average.

Moving to Sinner, his scatterplot does not show as extreme of a trend, as his aggressor win% is seven percentage points higher than his reactor win% over the analyzed 185 match sample (scatterplot win rates are rounded). Compared to what we saw from Alcaraz, this difference across play styles is small. Sinner is highly successful whether he's playing above or below tour-average aggression levels.

Jannik has 103 matches in the reactor quadrant compared to 52 from Alcaraz, generally suggesting he has below-tour-average aggression on both metrics around twice as often. Whether he is ending points on his terms or his opponents, Sinner consistently wins and has a higher win% over the charted sample (87.0%) than Alcaraz (82.3%).

The Alcaraz Profile: Built to Dictate

So we’ve explored how Carlos is at his best when he has both an above-tour-average rally and return aggression, but we can break this down further. The figure below breaks down average values for multiple statistics in our 181 match sample separated by wins (green) and losses (red). As we would expect after seeing his scatterplot above, Carlos has the biggest changes across his wins and losses in both rally (+27.3) and return (+24.3) aggression. Outside of these metrics, we see a notable increase when his famous drop shot is successful at ending the point. In matches Carlos wins, his drop shot winner% increases by 10.4 percentage points from 30.3% to 40.7%. While his average net frequency across all of these matches is 12.8%, Carlos sees a 7.4 percentage point increase in his net point win% in wins compared to losses. To summarize, we’ve seen how Carlos is more successful when he is aggressive in rallies and on returns, but he gets a boost from his drops shots and volleys in wins.

The Sinner Profile: Built to Adapt

Outside of Alcaraz, Sinner does not lose very often, and part of that could be because he is successful both as the aggressor and reactor. Looking at Jannik’s averages over our 185 match sample, we can see that he has a slightly higher rally aggression average (+5.3), and a way higher return aggression average (+17.0) in his wins. While these swings are lower than Carlos’s, they still illustrate trends. In his wins, Sinner is more aggressive on return and in rallies, but both values are still lower than the tour average. Now, this does not mean Sinner is defensive or passive in rallies, it just means he is not ending points on his terms as often as his opponents. Sinner often looks like he’s playing on 2x speed; he rips the ball with a lot of power from the center of the strings, leaving his opponents scrambling. The negative rally aggression suggests a few things: Sinner may force his opponents to go for aggressive, point-ending shots more often, he keeps the ball in play longer as less of his shots end points, and he capitalizes on his opponents mistakes while making less of his own.

Like Alcaraz, Sinner also sees a jump in drop shot winner% (+7.6 percentage points) and net point win% (+10.9 percentage points) in his wins compared to losses. While this makes sense for Carlos, as hitting drop shots and winning at the net are both aggressive tactics, it is a bit surprising for Jannik, whose average net frequency over the entire sample is 9.8%. This could mean that Jannik is selectively aggressive during key moments in wins where he goes for drop shots or approaches to the net despite a negative average rally aggression.

Year-Over-Year Evolution

It is safe to say that both of these players have changed since the beginning of 2023, so I wanted to separate this data by yearly averages. Looking first at Carlos, we can see that he had his lowest win%, across the dataset, in 2024 when his rally and return aggression averages were low (for his standards). His highest win% in charted matches came in 2025, where he had a high rally aggression average and middling return aggression average. Maybe the key could be dialing back return aggression while increasing or maintaining a high rally aggression. In his five charted matches in 2026, Carlos’s rally aggression average of +4.0 would be a new low since 2023, but it clearly has not impacted his win% so far. It will be interesting to see where his average finishes at the end of the year.

Sinner’s year-by-year data is more sporadic than anticipated, but this allows for some interesting analysis. In the completed years in the dataset, Sinner has his lowest charted match win% in 2023. During this year, he had his highest rally aggression average and return aggression average. Sinner’s win% jumped in 2024 when both his rally and return aggression averages plummeted. Both values substantially increased in 2025, yet Jannik had a slightly higher win%. In his six charted matches in 2026, Jannik’s rally and return aggression averages have moved back towards their 2024 levels, but win% has not shown the payoff yet. We will see where he finishes at the end of 2026.

So we have two clear profiles: Alcaraz needs to dictate, Sinner thrives regardless. But what happens when they face each other?

The Rivalry That Breaks Both Strategies

Alcaraz and Sinner produce must-watch tennis almost every time they meet due to their significant talent levels. While this is 100% the case, I will argue that their matches are especially entertaining due to their contrasting play styles. Alcaraz and Sinner force each other to play outside of their comfort zones and the result is a largely unpredictable outcome.

The scatterplots below show the rally and return aggression values for each of the 11 charted meetings between Sinner and Alcaraz in the 2023-2026 dataset. The “aggressor” quadrant is highlighted green and the “reactor” quadrant is red like before. As we can see, there is not a crystal-clear trend that jumps out between these plots. For Alcaraz, he has wins over Sinner with a -89 and +81 rally aggression score, and losses with -38 and +41. While he is 3-0 in charted matches in the top right aggressor quadrant, the rest of the data shows that he has been successful with other play styles as well. For Sinner, he has a cluster of charted losses with below average return and rally aggression scores, but also half of his wins mixed in. He is 1-1 in the aggressor quadrant, which is better than the reactor quadrant, but still does not produce a clear pathway for success.

The Alcaraz/Sinner rivalry breaks both strategies because neither player’s typical pattern predicts outcomes. Carlos has wins scattered across all four quadrants, and Sinner's four wins span three different quadrants. Sure, there are quadrants where each has a higher winning percentage than others, but I’m not ready to ring the bell and declare a concrete takeaway just yet. Based on what we have seen so far, I’d advise Jannik to up his rally and return aggression because staying in the reactor quadrant does not seem to be working (2-6 record). While this mentality is clearly successful against the rest of the tour, he may need to get outside his comfort zone and be more aggressive against Carlos. Is Carlos more successful in the head-to-head because he’s more aggressive? Maybe, he has a large cluster of wins when he is more aggressive, but I would like more data to be sure.

What makes this rivalry so special is not just the talent level, but the genuine unpredictability. Alcaraz has won playing his typical aggressive game, but also taking a page from Jannik’s book and employing a below-tour-average aggression level. It is almost like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Carlos’s shot variety is a clear weapon, but Jannik’s defensive consistency and pressure makes it difficult to execute. Jannik may prefer to let his opponents crumble under pressure and let their over-aggression backfire, but Carlos neutralizes that edge both with his physical game and mental resilience. Sure, there are some slight head-to-head takeaways from this analysis: Alcaraz is more successful with higher aggression and Jannik’s under-aggression is clearly not working against Carlos. However, I would like to see more before I deviate from believing a portion of these outcomes depend on the day itself, not the data. The uncertainty is what makes this rivalry so special and, luckily for us, we are going to bear witness to many more Alcaraz/Sinner epics in the future.