“We’re going to take you back in time,” begins Pete Odgers in his commentary of the very first match between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. It took place not during the early rounds of a Grand Slam tournament, or at a relatively low-stakes ATP 250. Rather, it took place on the ATP Challenger Tour.
The setting was Alicante, a coastal city in Spain’s southeast. It was April 2019, when Sinner was ranked 319th in the world and Alcaraz didn’t even have an ATP ranking. But the clearest indicator that we’re not in 2025 is the crowd on hand. Alcaraz vs. Sinner is appointment viewing for tennis fans of all degrees today, but back then, you could count how many people were in the stands.
And they are some of the luckiest tennis fans in the world.
This Challenger clash between the 15-year-old Spaniard and the 17-year-old Italian was the equivalent of watching Nolan Ryan take the mound for the Single-A Greenville Mets, or Mike Tyson’s first fight in Albany, N.Y. All transformative talents begin somewhere—but in this case, you get to watch two of them play one another.
And now, it’s available to stream in full, by subscribing to the Tennis Channel app.
Six years later, Alcaraz and Sinner are No. 1 and No. 2 in the world. Their next collision could take place this weekend at the ATP Finals in Turin. To borrow a phrase from another tennis legend, they’ve come a long way, baby.
Which makes it even more amazing to watch them intersect as their journeys were only getting started. Their strokes aren’t as refined, their looks are a bit different (what would 15-year-old Alcaraz thought about a platinum blonde ’do?) and there’s so much to come that neither player knows.
But we do. And their first match—just like their next match—is must-see. (Spoiler alert: Alcaraz prevails in a final set.)