Fifteenth meeting, first on grass: Sinner and Zverev play for the Wimbledon title

Fourteen. That is how many times Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev have played each other, and not one of those matches was on grass. Sunday's Wimbledon final is the fifteenth and the first: Sinner, the defending champion, made it there by beating Novak Djokovic 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, and Zverev ended Arthur Fery's wildcard run 7-6(0), 6-2, 6-4 to reach his first Wimbledon final.

Jannik Sinner's fortnight began with its hardest match. Miomir Kecmanović took him to five sets in the first round, 4-6, 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-2, 6-3, and no one has taken a set off him since. Nuno Borges held him to two tiebreaks before folding, 7-6(4), 7-6(2), 6-4, then came Jenson Brooksby (6-4, 6-3, 6-4), the qualifier Shintaro Mochizuki (6-3, 7-6(0), 6-3) and Jan-Lennard Struff in the quarter-final, 7-5, 7-6(4), 6-3. The semi-final was his cleanest match of all: 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 over Novak Djokovic, the man who ended Sinner's first Wimbledon semi-final in 2023. One more win gives Sinner a second straight Wimbledon title, a year after he beat Carlos Alcaraz in the 2025 final, and a fifth Grand Slam title.

Alexander Zverev had never been past the fourth round here in nine previous visits, and twelve months ago he lost in the first round to Arthur Rinderknech. The tenth visit nearly ended the same way: Alexander Blockx pushed him through three tiebreaks in the opening round, 6-4, 6-7(8), 7-6(5), 7-6(0). From there the road firmed up. Valentin Royer went in straight sets, 6-1, 6-3, 7-6(3), so did Marcos Giron, 6-2, 7-6(4), 6-4, and after a four-set fourth round against Jiří Lehečka, 6-4, 7-5, 3-6, 7-6(6), Zverev produced his most convincing tennis of the fortnight when it counted: 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 over Taylor Fritz in the quarter-final, then the 7-6(0), 6-2, 6-4 that ended the Fery story on Friday, the first-set tiebreak won seven points to none. Like Sinner, he has dropped exactly two sets on the way in.

The rivalry is old and one-sided. It started at Roland Garros in 2020, all fourteen meetings came on hard or clay, ten on hard and four on clay, and Sinner leads it 10-4. The recent record is heavier than the total: Sinner has won their last nine meetings, a run going back to Cincinnati in August 2024, and Zverev's last win dates to the 2023 US Open fourth round, nearly three years ago. This season alone they have met four times, in the Indian Wells, Miami and Monte Carlo semi-finals and the Madrid final, all won by Sinner in straight sets. Across their last seven meetings Zverev has taken one set.

They have played one Grand Slam final before. In Melbourne in January 2025, Sinner beat Zverev 6-3, 7-6(4), 6-3 for the Australian Open title; that was Zverev's third major final and his third defeat. He has since fixed that line, beating Flavio Cobolli in five sets at Roland Garros last month for his first Grand Slam title. So Sunday brings a different Zverev, a major champion at last and chasing a second one in the same summer, against the same problem as ever: a Jannik Sinner who defends the title, owns the head-to-head, and now gets to test it on the one surface where they have never met.

Wimbledon notebook, 10 July 2026, sources: The Championships, Wimbledon; api-tennis