Jannik Sinner advanced to the final of the Italian Open in Rome on Saturday after completing a rain-suspended semifinal victory over Daniil Medvedev, winning 6-2, 5-7, 6-4. The world number one had led 4-2 in the third set when play was halted on Friday evening due to rain, and needed just 15 minutes to seal the match the following day. "You are in the third set, nearly done, but you still have to show up again and you never know what is happening. It is like the start of the match as there are nerves again," Sinner said after the win.
The road to the finish line was far from straightforward. After cruising through the opening set in just 32 minutes, Sinner appeared visibly drained as Medvedev raised his level in the second, moving the Italian around the court with drop shots and deep groundstrokes. Sinner was seen bent over his racket in apparent exhaustion at several points, and received treatment on his right thigh during the second set — an issue that had already surfaced in his quarterfinal. He dropped the second set after being broken in the final game, but steadied himself to take control of the third and refuse to let the match slip away.
The victory extends Sinner's remarkable run to 33 consecutive wins at Masters 1000 level, a record he had only just taken from Novak Djokovic in the previous round. More broadly, the 24-year-old has not lost a match since the Qatar Open quarterfinals in February, a streak that now stands at 28 victories and includes five successive Masters titles. A win on Sunday would make him only the second man after Djokovic to have won all nine Masters 1000 tournaments, and the second man after Rafael Nadal in 2010 to sweep the three clay Masters — Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome — in a single season.
Sinner's opponent in the final will be Norway's Casper Ruud, ranked 25th in the world, who earlier on Friday demolished local wildcard Luciano Darderi 6-1, 6-1. Ruud acknowledged the scale of the task ahead: "Jannik is chasing history. I have to be the guy to try to stop him, and it will not be easy playing here in his home country." Sinner leads their head-to-head 4-0 without dropping a set, including a 6-0, 6-1 demolition of Ruud at this same tournament last year. An Italian winner would carry additional symbolic weight — no Italian man has lifted the Rome trophy since Adriano Panatta in 1976, and Panatta himself is scheduled to present the trophy on Sunday, with Italian President Sergio Mattarella also expected to attend.
The final will also set the tone heading into the French Open, the only Grand Slam Sinner has yet to win. Defending champion Carlos Alcaraz is sidelined with a wrist injury and will miss both Rome and Roland Garros, leaving the field open for Sinner to make further history on clay.