Top seed and title-holder Jannik Sinner marked his 24th birthday in style, reaching the Cincinnati Open final with a straight-sets 7-6, 6-2 win over French qualifier Terence Atmane on Saturday. World number one Sinner served to perfection, taking 91% of his first-serve points and failing to offer his opponent a single break point in an 86-minute encounter.
The Italian was celebrated with a rendition of "Happy Birthday" by the crowd after his victory and conceded the challenge was anything but simple. "Every time you play against someone totally different it's very tough," Sinner stated. "I understood I had to be incredibly, incredibly careful and my headspace today was in good shape."
In spite of Sinner's superior ranking and experience, Atmane kept pace in a hotly contested first set. Both men served strongly, neither giving the other a break-point chance. Sinner lost only three points on serve during the whole set but had to remain patient as Atmane kept things tied game by game.
The turning point arrived in the tiebreak as Atmane started with a double fault, giving Sinner the upper hand. The current U.S. Open, Australian Open, and Wimbledon champion seized the moment quickly, sailing to a easy decider win to capture the set.
Sinner transferred his momentum to the second set, beginning with a nine-minute hold that kicked the set into life before he tightened his grip on the match. A pivotal break for 3-1 turned the match in his favor decisively, and the Italian supplemented it with a sequence of authoritative holds to reach 4-1.
Atmane, who stunned top-10 players Taylor Fritz and Holger Rune on his way to his first Masters 1000 semi-final, battled bravely but couldn't quite keep pace with Sinner's tireless consistency. Serving at 2-5 to extend the match, the Frenchman slipped to 0-40 before netting a forehand on match point.
Sinner's victory earned him a spot in Monday's final, where he will meet either second seed Carlos Alcaraz or German sensation Alexander Zverev. The win also puts him on course to defend his Cincinnati title and continue to dominate before the U.S. Open.
Atmane's loss, though, was not enough to diminish the fact that this is his breakthrough moment a demonstration of the 22-year-old's ability to hang with the world's best.
