How the Winner of the 2026 Sunshine Double Makes It Hard to Root for the Underdog
Jannick Sinner recently became one of a select few tennis players to complete the Sunshine Double. This is achieved by winning both the Indian Wells Open and Miami Open in the same season. This comes at a time when Sinner was considered to be on his back foot: he had recently lost the Australian Open and had an unceremonious finish to the 2025 season. Many put this recent trend in reference to the current first-ranked tennis player, Carlos Alcaraz. The two have had a rivalry for the past couple of years, and Alcaraz winning the Australian Open title seemed to suggest that Sinner needed to step up his game. This was the narrative going into the two Masters 1000 tournaments this March: would Alcaraz win and prove he was a better player than Sinner, or would the second-ranked player make a comeback?
The next tournament is the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters, which has recently started, and could be an uphill battle for Sinner. The tournament is one of nine mandatory Masters 1000 tournaments that occur every season. These tournaments are used to frame the four Grand Slams, the biggest tournaments in tennis, for the season. The Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters is used to frame the French Open, Roland Garros, as both tournaments take place on clay courts. The narrative for this Masters 1000 has been about who Sinner needs to beat in order to face Alcaraz in the finals. His largest obstacles are Felix Auger-Aliassime, Daniil Medvedev, Alexander Zverev, and Andrey Rublev. Yet, very few are talking about how these players, or much less any other players not ranked in the top 25, have any chance at winning the Masters.
Tennis has been, especially since the turn of the century, a sport that gets dominated by a handful of players. Right now, it’s mostly Sinner and Alcaraz, two relatively fresh faces on the scene who have won most of the major titles in the past couple of years. Before them, the dominant faces were Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. Tennis is an individual sport; players do not sign on for a team, they play for themselves. Due to this, if a player doesn't play well in a large tournament, they might not make any money at all. Compared to basketball or soccer, where professional athletes get paid as long as they play with their team. A few years ago, Vox reported that “about 80% of the top 1000 ranked players don’t earn enough from the sport to cover the expenses of playing at the top level.”
Tennis players make money in two ways from professional tennis: prize money and brand deals. For the vast majority of players, prize money is difficult to maintain as a stable source of income. There are so few major tournaments that often get dominated by the top players, so many of these other players rely on brand deals. The issue is that brands often want to sponsor players who are successful because they get more publicity. This is similar to working as a professional actor; the major difference is that tennis players haven’t had a major union for decades. The current union, PTPA, is very new and still getting its feet off the ground. Having money doesn’t make someone a good tennis player, but money can help someone live a healthy enough life to continue as a good tennis player. When the top players are able to afford the best diet, physical therapy, and coaches money can buy, whereas a majority of the professional tennis players are struggling to fly tournament to tournament, there's no wonder that these other players are considered obstacles for Sinner compared to contenders for the title.
