As well as Jannik Sinner is playing at Wimbledon, he doesn’t appear to need much in the way of help. Still, he got some Saturday when his opponent, Pedro Martinez, was dealing with a problematic shoulder that compromised his serve.
The No. 1-ranked Sinner has dropped a total of 17 games so far, made his way to the fourth round for the seventh consecutive Grand Slam tournament — he’s collected three such trophies in that span — and never was truly in trouble during a 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 victory over No. 52 Martinez.
“We all saw that he was struggling,” Sinner said, then noted about his own form: “First week couldn’t have gone better.”
Sinner has yet to drop serve across his opening three matches, and the 17 games he has conceded are the fewest by any men’s No. 1 seed at Wimbledon to make the second week since the Open era began in 1968. He’s the second man overall to cede just 17 games through three completed matches, the other being Jan Kodes, who ended up losing in the semifinals in 1972.
There’s been zero sign of any sort of inability on Sinner’s part to move past last month’s French Open final, which he lost to Carlos Alcaraz in five sets despite taking the first two and holding three championship points.
Against Martinez, Sinner went up 5-0 after 20 minutes. During that stretch of 29 points, Martinez managed just one winner, while Sinner accumulated 10.
That’s when Martinez took a medical timeout, and a trainer massaged the back of his right shoulder. The Spaniard was delivering first serves as slow as 76 mph, compared with Sinner’s high of 133 mph.
That aspect of Martinez’s game improved incrementally, but the only, ever-so-brief, moment of intrigue at Centre Court came in the second set, about 75 minutes in, with Sinner up a break and serving at 4-3. That’s where Martinez managed to accrue his first four break points of the match.
Sinner stayed as calm as can be — “I don’t think Sinner’s changed expressions once in this match,” John McEnroe observed on BBC’s telecast — and erased all four of those chances, held for 5-3, then broke to end the set.
Soon enough, Sinner — twice an Australian Open champion, once a US Open champion and a 2023 semifinalist at Wimbledon — was heading into a contest Monday against Grigor Dimitrov or Sebastian Ofner, whose match was delayed by rain in the second set.
Sinner will be making his 17th fourth-round appearance in a Slam, passing Nicola Pietrangeli for the most by an Italian man in tennis history
In other men’s singles results Saturday, No. 22 Flavio Cobolli earned his debut trip to a major’s round of 16 by defeating No. 15 Jakub Mensik 6-2, 6-4, 6-2.
ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
