Jannik Sinner backed for Roland Garros success after smart scheduling decision

Nick Monroe and Brad Gilbert believe that the Grand Slam chances of Sinner have been further improved by the scheduling decisions made by both him and Alcaraz, even more than the latter’s injury.

Sinner chose to take some time off before Madrid, whereas Alcaraz went straight to Barcelona and ended up picking up an injury.

And Monroe was already complimentary about Sinner before any injury news emerged. Speaking on the Big T Podcast, he said:

“Yeah, and I think we’ve got to look at scheduling. You know, you look at Jannik Sinner. He’s not playing in Barcelona.”

“Carlos Alcaraz is there, right? So there are a lot of matches now that Carlos Alcaraz is going to be playing potentially in Barcelona, in Madrid, obviously being in Spain. And as we know he likes to play in front of a crowd so that’s why he’s playing those tournaments but that’s a lot of matches to be played.

“I actually like for Jannik Sinner the fact that now he’s not going to be playing this week and he’s also maybe not going to play Madrid.”

“He is scheduled to play at the moment but may choose instead just come back when it comes round Rome. But I’m alright with it if he takes a couple weeks off and just focus on fitness like getting mentally prepared and body well set too.

Carlos Alcaraz’s injury leaves questions ahead of Roland Garros

There were signs of trouble for Carlos Alcaraz during his match against Otto Virtanen, and his comments afterwards haven’t eased any concerns.

What started as a sharp pain has turned into something more serious than he first realised.

He explained: “It’s a more serious injury than we expected when we saw the results of this morning’s tests. I’m stepping back to avoid taking any risks.”

The clay-court calendar is only getting busier, and this setback comes after just one tournament on the surface.

With Roland Garros approaching, he now faces a tight timeline to recover and get himself in shape to compete with Sinner.