• The Athletic has live coverage from Day 12 at Wimbledon 2025

Two years ago, Jannik Sinner uttered some words that made him sound a little delusional.

One year prior, he’d taken a two-set lead over Novak Djokovic in their 2022 Wimbledon quarterfinal, before succumbing in five sets. He had pushed the seven-time Wimbledon champion to five sets on the grass that he has made his front lawn for most of his career.

When he spoke two years ago, Sinner had just lost in straight sets to the same player: 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(4). A fairly straightforward scoreline for the greatest player of the modern era on his favorite court.

And then Sinner, who at that point was yet to make a Grand Slam final, sat behind a microphone and told the world he was getting closer, not further away.

“Regardless of the score, I felt like I was more close this year than last year,” Sinner said.

“That’s what I felt. I felt like also the level was better. I think it’s something positive from my point of view.”

He had chances early in the match; he had chances in the second set. He’d even had set points in the third, before Djokovic took over yet another Wimbledon tiebreak.

He said it again.

“I felt like I was closer this year than last year, even if last year was five sets.”

Then, it all seemed a bit odd. In retrospect, Sinner may have never been more on the nose. At the time, Djokovic, who had served as a kind of tennis mentor since Sinner was 14, had never lost to the young Italian. Sinner would win their next match, then lose one more, before compiling four wins in a row. He has now flipped their head-to-head record from 0-3 to 5-4.

How that happened is a story of one man fighting an inevitably losing battle against aging, the one truly undefeated foe, and of another surging into his prime.

Djokovic is 38, a player who could once beat opponents in 14 different ways, sometimes switching from point to point. One of those options, depending on who stood on the other side of the net, was to fight wars of attrition. The longer the rallies, the longer the match wore on, the better his chances, even on days when he didn’t have his A-game.

That option has pretty much gone out the window for Djokovic, as it does for any player trying to compete at an age when most players have hit their last ball long ago. So he reinvented himself, or more accurately, optimized what was already astounding. He turned his serve into a line-hitting metronome, designed to cut through his own games as quickly and efficiently as possible. The intent? To turn every return game into an opportunity, then to seize that opportunity as quickly as possible, too.

There’s a reason, other than being one of the great returners of serve in tennis history, Djokovic is tied for second on return winners in the men’s singles draw over the past fortnight, with 13. When he sees an opportunity to end a point, he has to go for it, playing first-strike tennis.

It mostly works. But if Djokovic has turned this style of tennis into his late-career bread and butter, then Sinner is its apex predator. The Italian’s version has allowed him to overtake Djokovic and win five of their past six matches, including the last four in a row. Sinner most recently triumphed at the French Open last month, also in the semifinals, the only match of that tournament in which Djokovic finished on the wrong end of points between zero and four shots.

That is what Sinner will bring to Centre Court against Djokovic on Friday.

“Jannik is the kind of player who loves to play in a very fast pace the entire match,” Djokovic said after that Roland Garros loss in straight sets.

“He’s very physical. He’s very fit, and he’s striking the ball incredibly well. He seems to be always in a good timing. He’s rarely off-balance and he’s just playing the tennis of his life.”

No one would take issue with that. Sinner has held the top spot in the rankings for the past 18 months, even through a three-month suspension for two positive tests for a banned anabolic steroid, which both tennis doping authorities and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accepted were unintentional. He’s won half the Grand Slams contested since the start of 2024. Carlos Alcaraz has the other three.

The wild card is the grass. Sinner has never made a Wimbledon final before. No one knows the surface, its intricacies, and how to use every square inch of the court better than Djokovic. He made the final last year having had surgery on a torn medial meniscus in his knee just weeks before. There have been moments this tournament when he has stutter-stepped across the grass as he did a decade ago, with a quickness that benefits from his unmatched anticipation.

“I’ve never won against him here in Wimbledon, so it’s going to be a very, very tough challenge,” Sinner said.

The problem for Djokovic is that Sinner gives opponents so few opportunities to get at him. Against Ben Shelton in the quarterfinals, he lost just two points on his serve during the first set, one of them in the tiebreak. He has won 62 of 65 service games, the best winning percentage in the tournament. He’s won 82 percent of his first-serve points, tied for third in that category with Taylor Fritz, who plays Alcaraz in the other semifinal. Djokovic is tied for 15th. Alcaraz is tied for 31st.

Sinner’s serve quality and accuracy, the number of bullets he rifles to within inches of the lines, have been on pace to be his best ever at Wimbledon. He’s also won a higher percentage of baseline points, 56, than anyone else. Djokovic is just behind him in that category, at 53 percent.

Shelton said the ball Sinner hits from the baseline is unlike anything else in the sport. He said it feels like the ball is moving twice as quickly as it is against others.

“It’s difficult when a guy’s hitting the ball that big, that consistently off both wings, and serving the way he is,” said Shelton, who endured another humbling straight-sets defeat to Sinner in the quarterfinals.

Sinner knows this. It allows him to play the aggressive style that Djokovic has to try to match.

“Many things have changed for me,” he said after the Shelton win when asked to compare himself to the player who lost here to Djokovic two years ago. “I’m more comfortable, let’s say, or confident. The new, new generation is growing. Novak is here and obviously Carlos and a lot of other players.”

On Friday, he will focus on just one: the 24-time Grand Slam champion searching for one more miracle, before the second one he may need to win his 25th.

“It’s going to take the best of me at the moment to beat Jannik,” Djokovic said.

“I know that. So that’s the only thing I’m thinking about right now, just getting myself physically and mentally in the right state so I can fight with him for as long as it’s necessary.”

For Djokovic, as long as necessary is likely as short as possible.

(Top photo: Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)