Jannik Sinner Lifts Lid On When He Made His Decision to Withdraw From the Davis Cup Finals

Jannik Sinner’s decision to skip the Davis Cup Finals this year has been a big talking point for the past two months. The 24-year-old helped Italy clinch their first Davis Cup title in over 45 years in 2023. He has finally opened up about what led him to withdraw from the tournament despite being one of the country’s brightest talents.

There were expectations that Sinner would, for the third season in a row, help Italy win the Davis Cup Finals in Turin. The World No.1 had helped his country defend the title last year in Malaga, especially in the final when they faced the Netherlands. But his decision not to play at this year’s edition has led to a lot of backlash and criticism.

The 24-year-old has played in consecutive tournaments since the US Open, where he lost to his arch-rival Carlos Alcaraz in the final. He featured at the China Open, where he claimed his first ATP 500 title of the season. He then played at the Rolex Shanghai Masters before playing in an exhibition tournament in Riyadh.

He claimed a back-to-back indoor hard court tournament, which took his tally to five titles this season. The 24-year-old claimed the Vienna Open, beating Alexander Zverev in three sets in the final before claiming his first Masters 1000 of the season in Paris. The ATP Finals in Turin is expected to be his final tournament of the 2025 season.

After the ATP Finals, he plans to have a nice vacation ahead of the 2026 season rather than competing at the Davis Cup Finals. He revealed during an interview with Sky Sports Italia that he needs enough rest after the season to prepare adequately for the 2026 season as he aims to be at full speed:

If you have an extra week of preparation, besides having an extra week of vacation, you arrive at preparation stronger, more motivated, with more energy and above all with more desire. We play tennis every day and so it’s normal that, sometimes, you don’t have much desire… but if you start the training weeks seven days earlier, because it’s not like you start at full speed from the first day, those are very important.

Sinner is fresh off winning the Rolex Paris Masters and has a few days to prepare for the ATP Finals in Turin. He’s currently focused on overcoming the long odds of dethroning his arch-rival Alcaraz as the year-end World No.1. However, regardless of how the tournament plays out, Sinner is ending the season on a high note.

Jannik Sinner says the Italian team has enough talents to win the Davis Cup

Jannik Sinner has often been seen as the backbone of the Italian team at the Davis Cup. For the past two editions of the tournament, he has always helped them out in difficult circumstances and sometimes features in doubles to help the team win. But this year, fellow Italian stars like Lorenzo Musetti and Flavio Cobolli have made waves on tour.

During the interview mentioned above, Sinner revealed that he did not like the manner in which people belittled the talents in the Italian team. The World No.1 pointed out that they still have good players who can help them win the Davis Cup title:

The thing I personally don’t like is that we have an incredible team even without me, and no one’s talking about it. We have to do without the world number 26, who right now is [Luciano] Darderi. We can afford not to call the world number 26 in the Davis Cup because we have [Flavio] Cobolli, [Lorenzo] Musetti and so many others.

Musetti and Cobolli reached the semi-finals of the French Open and the quarter-finals of Wimbledon, respectively. Musetti’s form saw him break into the top 10 for the first time in his career and he’s currently fighting for the final spot at the ATP Finals in Turin, while Cobolli claimed two ATP titles and broke into the top 30 in the ATP rankings.

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