Tallon Griekspoor thinks one of the keys to beating Jannik Sinner is to play very aggressively, but also have luck because the four-time Grand Slam champion is "incredibly good and dominant."
In 2025, Sinner enjoyed another extremely dominant season after winning 58 matches and losing only six. What makes the Italian tennis star's stat even more astonishing is the fact that only two of those six defeats came against someone other than Carlos Alcaraz.
One of the two players besides Alcaraz who managed to beat Sinner in 2025 was Griekspoor.
After losing to Sinner in each of their opening six matches, Griekspoor went toe-to-toe with the world No. 2 right from the start of their Shanghai Masters third-round match. While the world No. 25 dropped a very tight first set via a tie-break, the Dutch refused to quit and managed to force a decider by taking the second set with a 7-5 scoreline.
Then, at the start of the third set, Griekspoor claimed a break in the fifth game for a 3-2 lead before Sinner retired due to cramps.
Griekspoor: I go quite big with my game against Sinner… But you also need luck
“I’m someone who’s quite dominant on serve; I go quite big for my serve against him. He’s the best returner in the game at this point. I have to play pretty hard on the second serve, because if I don’t, then the second one is tough and nine times out of ten, when it goes to a long rally, I will lose. I try to play pretty risky within my own limits; sometimes I even go beyond them to beat him. A couple of times I was close to beating him and I let it slip because I went over my limits and he was just picking up and went over me," the world No. 25 said on Bolshe!
“When I beat him in Shanghai, I saved a lot of break points. I was a set down, 4–3, 0-40 down, which I saved. Sometimes you need a bit of luck against Jannik… I played over my limit and you have to hope he has a little bit of an off day, which he doesn’t have many times."
Truth be told, Griekspoor challenged Sinner well even before upsetting the former world No. 1 in Shanghai. Last year, the Dutch was up by a set against the Italian in their Miami Masters and Halle meetings before the world No. 2 completed three-set comebacks.
