Ricky Dimon
It will be #1 vs #2 for the men’s singles French Open title on Sunday afternoon in Paris. Carlos Alcaraz is already a 4-time Grand Slam champion, with 1 title coming at Roland Garros. Sinner would equal his rival in each of those 2 departments with a victory this weekend. The Italian has captured the last 2 majors (2024 U.S. Open and 2025 Australian Open), so he is 1 win away from being three-fourths of the way to holding all 4 Grand Slam trophies at the same time – a proverbial “Sinner Slam.”
Let’s take a look at my best bets on the Day 15 schedule.
Jannik Sinner ML over Carlos Alcaraz (+100)
What I thought all along would happen when Sinner got suspended for three months is, in fact, what is happening. While everyone else was putting in massive, energy-sapping efforts on the clay-court swing, Sinner was resting up. The Italian lost to Alcaraz in the Rome final in his first tournament back, but that was…his first tournament back. Now he is in full flight at the French Open and has looked better than everyone else – by a considerable margin, too – throughout the fortnight. Alcaraz has been pretty good; Sinner has been great. The Spaniard’s peak form may be better than Sinner’s, but my guess is he will have too many ebbs and flows in his game to go toe to toe with Sinner’s consistency in a best-of-5 marathon. The world #1 has good value as a small underdog.
Jannik Sinner vs Carlos Alcaraz Over 38.5 games (-125)
When these 2 friendly rivals go head-to-head, the standard is at worst a great match and at best the best match of all time. So even on the lower end of expectations, this should be a long and high-quality contest. They have squared off 3 times at Grand Slams, playing a pair of 5-setters and a 4-setter. Those 3 tussles produced 45, 56 and 39 games. In every match that Sinner and Alcaraz have played against each other (all 14 of them), they have either gone to a final set or played at least 1 tiebreaker. It’s hard to put into words just how unbelievable that is. The line for Sunday’s showdown is all over the place across the various sportsbooks. The over is an amazing play at 38.5, is definitely still playable at 39.5 and perhaps even playable at 40.5.
Carlos Alcaraz +2.5 aces vs Jannik Sinner (-138)
Not once in their last 3 head-to-head contests has Sinner struck more aces than Alcaraz. When they just squared off in Rome, the Spaniard fired 4 aces to his opponent’s 1. When they met at the 2023 French Open, an epic 5-setter saw Alcaraz finish with 8 aces and Sinner 7. Overall in 12 H2H meetings, the Italian has just 2 more aces (53 to 51). Through 6 rounds at this tournament, it’s 29 for Sinner and 20 for Alcaraz; still, that’s only 1.5 more per match. Finally, over the last 52 weeks Alcaraz ranks second among top-50 players in lowest ace percentage on return; he is getting aced on just 4.7 percent of return points. Sinner ranks #22 in that same metric at 7.7 percent.
