No. 5 of '22: Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner beam the future of tennis backwards in time (and play until 2:50 a.m.)

WATCH: Carlos Alcaraz d. Jannik Sinner, 6-3, 6-7 (7), 6-7 (0), 7-5, 6-3, in the US Open quarterfinals

Has there been a moment when you’ve felt like the future suddenly began to play out before your eyes? To this Gen-Xer, one event that fits that description was a video by the envelope-pushing art-rock band Sonic Youth that I stumbled across late one night in the 1980s. Compared to the music of the time, everything about their performance felt heightened: The guitars were noisier and more hair-raising; the rhythms more headlong and frenetic; the sound and style more sleekly menacing than anything else that was going on at the time. It sounded like music that was being beamed backwards in time from the mid-’90s.

When 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz and 21-year-old Jannik Sinner began slinging missiles at each other at 9:35 P.M. on Wednesday, September 7, I flashed back to that Sonic Youth video. This was tennis, not indie rock, and there was nothing particularly scary about these two loose-limbed kid athletes. But the heightening effect was the same. It felt like the Spaniard and the Italian were raising the ceiling on what was physically possible on a tennis court. This was tennis in overdrive. They took their shots earlier, hit them harder, covered more ground, and didn’t settle for rally shots or spend much time constructing points. They changed directions with the ball whenever they wanted and went for the knockout blow as soon as they could. And they did it for five hours and 15 minutes.

I mean, the energy I receive in this court at 3:00 A.M., it was unbelievable. Carlos Alcaraz

Alcaraz and Sinner made history for an impressive but hardly ideal reason. It finished at 2:50 A.M., making it the latest in a long line of wee-hour conclusions at the Open. That also makes it Exhibit A in unfortunate tennis scheduling; the match was a classic, and featured two new faces, but it finished too late for a huge audience in the eastern half of the U.S. to watch. It was also too late for most of the audience in Arthur Ashe Stadium, though there was still a rowdy core of fans there at 2:50.

Over those five hours and 15 minutes, those fans saw the most demanding and high-quality match of 2022. Alcaraz and Sinner hit 124 winners between them, came to net 100 times, and generated 42 break points. Both guys made a specialty of the spectacular. Sinner hit multiple sharp-angle passing shots while falling backwards, after tracking down Alcaraz lobs. Alcaraz one-upped him with a behind-the-back pass of his own.

“Insane shot quality!” was the (correct) summation of one TV commentator.

All of which might lead you to believe there was a robotic, video-game quality to this match, and to an extent there was. But there was also a human quality, as these two young players revealed that, despite their super-human skills, they were still inexperienced and vulnerable in clutch moments. Both were trying to do something they had never done before—make a Grand Slam semifinal—and it showed. Both played flawless tennis right up until the point when they had a chance to close out a set.

Serving for the second set at 5-4, Sinner was broken. Two games later, Alcaraz reached set point, and had the easiest of open-court forehands to take a two-set lead, but he drilled the ball into the net, and eventually lost the set in a tiebreaker. In the third, Alcaraz served for the set again, was broken again, and lost it in a tiebreaker again.

But the moment of truth came in the fourth set, and it came for Sinner. At 5-4, he reached match point. He served wide and bent down for a routine backhand. After hitting dozens of winners and controlling the action for most of the three previous sets, Sinner couldn’t put one more groundstroke into the court. His shot landed wide, and Alcaraz had new life. This time, he wouldn’t let his chance go.

Looking as strong as he had five fours earlier, Alcaraz ended the night with a serve that he struck so hard, it nearly hit Sinner in the chest.

“During the whole match, I feel great physically,” Alcaraz said. “The level of tennis that we played, it was really, really high. But I feel great.

“I mean, the energy I receive in this court at 3 A.M., it was unbelievable.”

Sinner was asked what happened in the game where he served for the match.

“Talking now, it’s easy, no? When you’re on the court, it’s different,” he said. “You feel a little bit more the pressure. You feel the momentum also. It’s part of the game.”

Alcaraz generated enough momentum in this match to launch himself to his first Grand Slam title four nights later. But both of these guys, and their friendly rivalry, will surely be central to the sport through the rest of the 2020s. They stand 2-2 in their head-to-head, and it was the Italian who came out on top in their fourth-round match at Wimbledon this year.

Like Sonic Youth in the 80s, Alcaraz and Sinner showed us that the future may move a little faster, and hit a little harder, than it does today.