French Open 2025 men’s final: Jannik Sinner v Carlos Alcaraz – tennis live

Salut et bienvenue à Roland-Garros 2025 – 15e jour!

We’re all friends here so we can be honest with one another: our lives are predictable, the days passing slowly and the years zipping by in a sapping imposition of the almost-same. The world, so full of fantasy and wonder, so much of it inaccessible to us other than on special occasions.

Which is one place sport comes in. It isn’t always good, far from it, but it sustains us with the prospect of something good; the sense that we don’t know what’s going to happen.

Yet our last two weeks have been building to the inevitability of now. When the men’s tournament started two weeks ago, it felt almost impossible that the final would be between anyone other than Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz and that’s exactly what’s happened, Sinner reaching this stage without losing a set and Alcaraz also domineering.

But this is where that ends. We can reason for ourselves which of these two future greats is likely yo be celebrating later on, but we cannot know: these are two supreme and supremely well-matched tennisers. Sinner has the edge in consistency and mentality, Alcaraz in mobility and creativity; Sinner has the higher modal level, Alcaraz the higher top level; Sinner hasn’t lost in 20 grand slam matches and has won 47 of his last 49 matches, but his two defeats came against Alcaraz, the defending champion, who beat him handily on clay just three weeks ago.

Nor is today solely about today. Though this is the pair’s first grand slam final meeting, even now, it seems inconceivable they won’t beat the record of nine heads-to-head held by Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Which is to say we are not just about to enjoy something of guaranteed quality, but the start of one of the great sporting rivalries, there to enrich our lacking lives for the next decade and more.

And in making it about ourselves, we can of course do more than just enjoy it, its protagonists believable archetypes and unique presences in whom we can easily see our reflections. Are we reliable, calm and introverted like Sinner, excitable and improvisational gamblers like Alcaraz … or does one represent how we see ourselves, the other how we’d like to see ourselves?

They are here, we are here, everything is here; this is going to be epochal. On y va!

Play: 3pm local, 2pm BST.