Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz was crowned winner for the second time in his career at Roland Garros this Sunday after defeating Italian Jannik Sinner in a memorable final (4-6, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 7-6), equaling his compatriot Rafa Nadal as the youngest to reach five ‘Grand Slam’ titles and Swiss Roger Federer as the second in the ‘Open Era’ to win his first five finals of a ‘major’, although he also differs from both in this case.
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The 2025 Roland Garros final is already at the summit of the best tennis matches in history. The five hours and 29 minutes that Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner spent on the clay of the Philippe-Chatrier court marked the longest final in the tournament’s history, almost five and a half hours of top-level tennis, surpassing the 4:42 of the 1982 final between Mats Wilander and Guillermo Vilas. The match ended with the player from Murcia raising his arms for the second consecutive year in Paris and for the fifth time in a major.
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But this fifth Grand Slam title has not only been the most special for the one from El Palmar because it is the first one in which he wins the final against Jannik Sinner, his great generational rival, nor even for being the first time in his short career that he is able to come back from a match that puts him two sets down. This Roland Garros of the Murcian will also be remembered for being the title in which the tennis player from El Palmar equaled two historical records of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
Regarding the Swiss, Alcaraz reached the milestone of winning his first five ‘Grand Slam’ finals with his victory over Sinner, although in his case he did so at a younger age, at 22 years old, two years younger than the Swiss player, the first to do so since the ‘Open Era’ was established in 1968. In his case, his titles would come in Wimbledon (2003, 2004, and 2005), the Australian Open (2004), and the US Open (2004). In these finals, he defeated Mark Philippoussis, Marat Safin, Lleyton Hewitt, and Andy Roddick, twice.
Now, Alcaraz, who has won 29 out of the 35 finals he has played on the ATP circuit and in the Olympic Games, has done the same at the US Open (2021), Wimbledon (2023 and 2024), and Roland Garros (2024 and 2025), matches for the title in which he has defeated Casper Ruud, Alexander Zverev, Jannik Sinner, and Novak Djokovic, on two occasions on the grass courts of London. In addition, his flawless record in ‘major’ finals is almost repeated in Masters 1000, where he has won seven out of the eight he has competed in.
But Carlos Alcaraz’s fifth Grand Slam also has another significant element: precocity. The player from Murcia lifted his second Musketeers’ Cup at the age of 22 years, one month, and three days, the exact same age at which Rafael Nadal would lift his first Wimbledon and fifth major of his career.
An age that makes the two Spaniards the youngest tennis players in history to win five titles in this category, although the one from Manacor already had seven ‘Grand Slam’ finals under his belt at that time, but with defeats at Wimbledon against Roger Federer in 2006 and 2007.
New challenges at Wimbledon
And the victory in Paris also allowed him to achieve two other uncommon milestones in the ‘Open Era’ since only Nadal and Thomas Muster had won Monte Carlo, Rome, and Roland Garros in the same year. The ‘king’ of clay did it multiple times (2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2012), while the Austrian left-hander achieved it in 1995.
For future seasons, the challenge will remain to achieve the grand slam of major titles (Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome, and Paris) of the spring clay court tour in a single season, a feat that only Nadal has been able to accomplish in 2010, a campaign in which he held an unbeatable record of 22-0, so far, for any other tennis player.
But in the short term, challenges will continue for Carlos Alcaraz in less than a month with the start of Wimbledon. There, on the courts of the All England Tennis Club, the player from El Palmar will seek to emulate greats like Roger Federer, Björn Borg, Pete Sampras, and Novak Djokovic, who are the only tennis players in the ‘Open Era’ to have won three consecutive titles on the London grass.
Furthermore, if he were to achieve it, he would be just one away from the seven consecutive finals won by the one from Basel, whose first defeat in a ‘Grand Slam’ final would come at Wimbledon 2008 against Rafa Nadal. A third title in London that would also mean the second consecutive Roland Garros-Wimbledon double, something that no player has achieved in over four decades since the Swedish Björn Borg linked the ‘Grand Slam’ titles on clay and grass consecutively between 1978 and 1980.