Daryl's Notebook: Quick thoughts from the 2025 Australian Open final
Was it an even match between the top-seeded players? Maybe...not.
Yes, I am hoping to start writing more about other sports other than football now! I have watched various sports over the years, but I never have the confidence to write anything about them since my knowledge about those sports are limited to just “following the actions and not seek out the tendencies”. Besides from football, maybe tennis is the sport that I have watched the most and followed for the longest, but all I know back then was “two people hitting the ball back and forth, and somehow one person wins points”.
But as I grew as a football analyst, the analytical thinking part of my brain also started growing, and that just happened to make watching tennis a lot more fun. Now, I still do not claim that I know a lot about tennis, especially about techniques like forehand, backhand, etc, so my thoughts will be sort of flawed. But I will try to provide some thoughts and analysis that I got from watching the match live, and hopefully, they all make sense.
Note: All stats used in this edition of the Notebook are courtesy of the Australian Open and InfoSys. It is great to have publicly available, detailed data like this, and I advocate for more of these!
The match
I will be honest, I have not watched Jannik Sinner that much to know his game and style very well. All I know about Sinner is many have said “he’s very good” and he is the future of tennis. Meanwhile, I have watched Sacha Zverev more, but still not as much as I would hope for. So going into the 2025 Australian Open final, I have little to no analytical thoughts about both players.
First thing, the aces. I was not surprised to see both Sinner and Zverev hitting aces at 200+ km/h as it seemed like that was part of their game. The tendencies of those aces, though, caught my attention since both players preferred to hit the ball down the T line or right into the A corner of the serve area. The data also confirms that, with all but one of Sinner’s aces was hit down the T while Zverev’s aces were more evenly distributed into those two mentioned areas.
I can understand why those aces are tough to defend, especially when both players kept hitting close to or over 200km/h for their first serves, with Sinner averaged at 197km/h for his first serves while Zverev averaged 205km/h for his first serves. When one player hit the ball at that pace into one of the two toughest areas to defend from first serve, the other player had little to no reaction time to return the ball if they opted to stand close to the baseline.
Sinner did react to this in the second set, especially after conceding 4 aces in the first set. The Italian opted to stay further away from the baseline and drop a lot deeper when Zverev was serving his first balls. This meant that the Italian had more time to react and return the ball from those first serves, and also played well into his defensive-oriented game. This also came with a cost, however, because Zverev was able to attack the net more often in an attempt to pin Sinner as further down his court as possible.
But one of the factors that cost Zverev the final was his attempts to attack the net just felt like self-destruction. On a few occasions when he tried to push forward, the German would either make an unforced error by overhitting or underhitting the ball, or he would allow Sinner to hit the ball around him while he had no time to react. In total, he tried to win 27 net points throughout the match, yet he only won just over half (52%) of them. There was a particular point in the second set where Zverev had successfully pinned Sinner to one side of the court and got up to attack the net, which presented him with an open court to smash the ball, yet the German just overhit what looked like an easy smash for him! That just sum up the day for Zverev, innit?
Second thing, speaking of Zverev’s unforced errors, oh boy, there was…a lot. The German had a few errors at baseline, but just look at those unforced errors at the net. That was the second, and probably the biggest factor, for why Zverev lost the final. He just made errors after errors by underhitting the ball and gave the points away to Sinner so easily. It even got to a point where his forehand and backhand unforced errors were almost equal to each other, and they almost were at the end of the match (24 forehand ground stroke errors and 16 backhand ground stroke errors). In total, he made 45(!) unforced errors throughout the whole match, more than the average number for a player throughout 2025 AO and almost more than half of Zverev’s average throughout this tournament. The nerves must have gotten to him.
The only way for Zverev to win points in the match was by hitting aces, which he did by winning 12 aces, because he kept conceding points by making unforced errors and there was no way that he could outlast Sinner in a rally. The Italian just defended his baseline very well and kept consistently hitting returns like a “programmed machine”, as the Australian channel commentators pointed out, almost like Erling Haaland with his goal-scoring.
“If you get into a rally with Sinner, then you are already behind”, I think it was Holger Rune and Stefanos Tsitsipas that said this, and it was true in the match against Zverev. With rallies that were 8 shots or less, both players won almost the same amount of points, but the rallies that had 9 or more shots made the difference (Sinner won 29 points from rallies with 9+ shots, compared to Zverev’s 14 points). Yes, Zverev also self-destructed on a few of those rallies by underhitting the ball, which led to the unforced errors above, but even then, it would be hard to imagine Zverev lasted through a long rally if not for Sinner making an error himself.
That was because Sinner’s techniques looked very good for me and it helped him lasted longer than Zverev, even though, as the commentators rightly pointed out, the Italian had an injury prior to the final and looked a bit struggling with cramps after 2 hours and 15 minutes in his semi-final match against Ben Shelton. One of the obvious factors that caught my eyes straight away was how long Sinner’s leg span was, and he managed to cover a lot of distance thanks to that (I could not find the actual stat on the match page, but it showed on TV at some point throughout the match, that Sinner covered more distance and run more than Zverev).
With his leg span, Sinner could be pinned on one side of the court and still managed to recover his position at the centre of the court with just a few steps. It was probably also why the Italian was happy to sit deeper during Zverev’s first serves, because he knew he could return the ball from the initial serve and then recovered his position at the baseline quite quickly. The defensive tactic worked for Sinner also because of that since he could grind out the rallies even when Zverev tried to force him onto one side of the court, kept returning the ball at the baseline to the opposite baseline, and waited for Zverev to make an error, which the German absolutely did.
This did not happen that frequently during the match, but I thought I might point it out, was Sinner’s technique to stretch for the balls that were hit by Zverev towards his baseline. He basically folded himself to get as low as possible while also stretched further to reach the returned ball from Zverev. That, and along with a few more factors, was probably why the commentators said Sinner looked “programmed” because he is agile, fast, and consistent. Just sounds a lot like the optimum tennis robot, innit?
Wrapping up
In the end, was the 2025 AO Final an even match considering it was between the top-seeded players? Not as much as I and many had hoped for. Sinner was largely consistent with his style and, even though might be a bit injured, still produced a high-quality performance that made him the deserved winner and defending champion of the tournament. Zverev was still good, but my question now is what does it take for him and Daniil Medvedev to win a grand slam? They are both good players, but they are also very fickle and their playing attitude has been the one thing that is pushing both of them further and further away from a grand slam title.
As for me, this is my first tennis-related article and I actually really enjoy writing about it. Like I have mentioned, my tennis knowledge is not as good as a lot of writers out there so my observations and analysis are quite limited. But if you like to read more articles like this one, let me know in the comments and I will improve my tennis knowledge and try to cover as many tournaments as I can in the future!