Jannik Sinner beat Jenson Brooksby 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 at Wimbledon and moved into the last 16. Pete Sampras matters here because this was the kind of straight-sets control that keeps the world No 1 moving through the draw without spending extra hours on court.
The match lasted two hours and 13 minutes. Sinner finished it with a forehand from Brooksby that went long after breaking again at 5-3 in the third set, then forcing a third match point. He had already won 11 out of 11 points at the net in the second set and went 4-for-4 on serve-and-volley points there.
Wimbledon and the net
That second-set work was the cleanest stretch of the match. Sinner did not stay back and wait for Brooksby to miss; he moved forward, finished every net point he tried in that set, and used four serve-and-volley plays to take the air out of the rally patterns.
He later summed up the night in simple terms: “Very happy about the win.” He added, “Trying to improve every day,” and called it a “Small step forward today [but] trying to get better.”
Brooksby in the third round
Brooksby was into the Wimbledon third round for the second time, and the match gave him a different sort of test against the top seed. He was diagnosed with autism as a young child and said last year that he had learned to first cope with and then enjoy big crowds and noisy atmospheres.
That background fits the kind of opponent he became in this run back into the top 100 after an 18-month ban in late 2023 for missing three anti-doping tests in a year. His ban was later reduced to 13 months on appeal, and he returned at the start of 2025.
Shintaro Mochizuki next
Sinner’s own margin looked cleaner than the final games felt. He was broken when he served for the match at 5-3 in the third set, then recovered to close it out and extend his Wimbledon streak to five straight years in the last 16.
He will play Shintaro Mochizuki next, after Mochizuki upset Rafael Jódar in four sets. Sinner said, “If I want to go far in this tournament, couple of things I need to handle better, but all in all, very happy.”
