Victory, glory, titles and a stain called doping: this, in cold analysis, has been Jannik Sinner's season. If on the court the Italian has won two Majors, the ATP Finals, the Davis Cup and a total of 8 titles, the difficulties following the positivity to Clostebol found in Indian Wells in March have tested him psychologically.
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The Italian tennis player inevitably touched on the topic during a long interview with Esquire Australia, in which he recounted in detail what happened in 2024.
"It was a tough time. I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I couldn't vent or ask for help. Everyone who knew me and watched me play understood that there was something wrong with me. I had sleepless nights, because even if you're sure of your innocence, you know that these things are complex. Everyone immediately told the truth and that allowed me to play. But at Wimbledon I was white. And even after that, my feeling towards people was fear. I went to train at the Clubhouse in Cincinnati and thought: how do they look at me? What do they really think of me? I understood who my real friends are," he said, in an interview conducted before playing the ATP Finals and the Davis Cup Finals.
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"I have grown a lot this year, both mentally and physically. The results you see now are not sudden. They are the fruit of the hard work we have done in the last two years. I am the son of a chef and I know that you do not start cooking a good dish in a few minutes. You study, you understand, you try and try again, then the final dish will be good," he added.
Jannik, in the meantime, is relaxing with a few well-deserved days of vacation, but will soon return to training with his team in Dubai. The 2-time Grand Slam champion reiterated that he will take to the court directly at the Australian Open 2025, a bit like what happened in 2024. Before that, the ATP No.1 will play from 7 to 10 January at the Opening Week, an exhibition tournament that will open the season.
It is a charity event that will be held at the Rod Laver Arena. With Sinner, Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, Qinwen Zhang and the Australian home idols Alex De Minaur and Alexei Popyrin have already been announced. After the Australian Open, Jannik will only take part in the ATP 500 tournament in Rotterdam in February, which will be held from 1 to 9 February 2025, and then the ATP Masters 1000 in Indian Wells and Miami in March, but obviously a lot will also depend on the CAS ruling on the Clostebol doping issue.
