Owen Lewis

@owensports

Contributing writer for Defector, bylines at The Guardian, n+1, The Second Serve, Texas Monthly, The Athletic, others. Available for freelance work. owentennis11@gmail.com

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Owen Lewis@owensports· Apr 1

I wrote some thoughts on Jannik Sinner. More here: www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

An excerpt from my n+1 article about Jannik Sinner: "Sinner’s rise to tennis’s machine-king throne looked unlikely until about two years ago. By late 2023, he had earned an identity as an underachieving top-fifteen stalwart, despite brief flashes of excellence. I liked watching Sinner around this time. I’d been in Melbourne for the 2023 Australian Open and sat in Federation Square for most of his quarterfinal with Stefanos Tsitsipas, silently rooting for Sinner to complete a comeback from two sets down. Sinner looked imperious in the third and fourth sets, commanding the court with brutal groundstrokes that exploded off his racket with pace and spin, as if thrown by a lacrosse stick. Sinner celebrated his successes by punching the air—uppercuts, hooks; Terence Crawford would have been impressed with the range—and flashing a grin at his support team after his best shots. But on the first point of the deciding fifth set, Sinner biffed an overhead smash, one of the easiest shots in tennis. That seemed to slash his tires. Tsitsipas won the set comfortably."

It took a couple years for Sinner to eradicate his weaknesses. A seminal moment allegedly came after a quarterfinal loss to Djokovic at Wimbledon in 2022. As the legend goes, Sinner’s coach Darren Cahill went to Djokovic for advice on how to improve his game, and was told that the young Italian was too predictable. Aside from the devastating speed of Sinner’s standard rally shot, there was nothing for Djokovic to fear. Many attribute Sinner’s subsequent success to the newfound variety of his game: backspin-loaded slices, soft drop shots, angles that prod the sidelines of the court and supplement his missiles. As of September 2025, though, Sinner still led the “core shots” leaderboard on the ATP Tour, meaning he strays from his bread-and-butter play less (11.7 percent of the time) than anybody else (19 percent on average). One story from the Australian Open in January highlighted that his forays into variety had grown to 13.7 percent, which would have moved him down on the leaderboard to . . . second. In fact, Sinner’s learned how to hit his average shot even harder and deeper into the court, at no cost to his own consistency. Djokovic was wrong: All Sinner really needed to do was master his best trick even further, to the extent that anticipating it no longer did a player any good.

and against players other than Carlos Alcaraz, Sinner is a terrifying 149–8.

Watch Sinner play and you’ll wonder how he possibly lost those eight matches against the riffraff. The notion that he could lose is simply not realistic. Since a flat loss to Alcaraz in the 2025 US Open final, Sinner has been serving at a historically high level, denying opponents even the opportunity to be annihilated by his groundstrokes and us the opportunity to see anything but curt, monochrome points. Any intrigue is not over a win or loss, but tiny details: Can the opponent break Sinner’s serve? Reach a break point? Win more than two or three points against Sinner’s first serve? Get that first serve back at all, and survive the devastating follow-up forehand if they do? Sinner’s mastery is staggering; it also, to my mind, effectively defeats the purpose of watching tennis. His matches reduce a two-way sport to a demonstration of excellence by one extremely consistent and calm individual. In November, Sinner won the ATP Finals—a tournament featuring only the best eight players in the world, theoretically the most competitive bracket on tour, given the quality of the field—for a second year in a row without even losing a set. Only the final against Alcaraz held any genuine danger for Sinner, as Alcaraz managed to go blow-for-blow despite picking up a hamstring edema early in the match. There wasn’t much to miss in Sinner’s other matches.

Rewatching old Sinner matches, it’s striking how many of his shots land near the middle of the court, juicily sitting up for the opponent to attack, and how much time he spends on defense. Unfortunately for the spectator, if not for Sinner’s record, what made his tennis interesting proved to be an inefficiency, which he has duly eliminated. And don’t go looking for the smiles and air punches that endeared Sinner to me three years ago, because you won’t see them from the dominant, composed player he is today. Some of this restraint might stem from Sinner’s unhappy brush with a doping scandal. In 2024, he tested positive for a small concentration of a banned substance; after the news broke, he seemed significantly more subdued on court. (An independent tribunal ruled him at no fault or negligence; following the World Anti-Doping Agency’s appeal, he settled on a three-month suspension, which he served in early 2025.) But there’s also just not much to celebrate in your standard 6–3, 6–2, 6–2 win over Alexei Popyrin, or your ninth consecutive evisceration of Ben Shelton. His personality has evaporated along with the friction in his matches.

Owen Lewis@owensports· Mar 29

There is no way the majors are making enough money from these YouTube posts to justify the loss of dignity right

A post from the Roland-Garros YouTube channel reading "An iconic duo [orange heart emoji]...Carlos Alcaraz & Juan Carlos Ferrero have announced the end of their collaboration after being partners for seven years.

A video on the official Australian Open YouTube channel for a podcast episode titled "Is De Minaur Hotter in a Headband? Moutet Shakes Off 'Danimal' DM Rumours"

A video on the Wimbledon YouTube channel of the third set of Jannik Sinner's 2025 semifinal win over Novak Djokovic. The video title misleadingly calls this the "full deciding set," implying it's a fifth set, when in reality Sinner won in straights. The title also includes "Pure excellence," followed by a fire emoji.

A video on the US Open's YouTube channel titled "Jannik Sinner Breaks Djokovic's 10-year Record." We are left to guess what said record is because the channel admin has not written it. (It's consecutive sets won at Masters 1000 events.) The video is a compilation of Sinner passing shots at the US Open; what this has to do with breaking a Djokovic record remains unclear.

Owen Lewis@owensports· Mar 17

Might have been worth a mention here that one of these two players tailored his entire career to invite that unfair burden at every possible opportunity and the other...did not

A paragraph from a Ringer article reading "The last two players who had the privilege of passing Jordan—Kobe Bryant and LeBron James—both carried the unfair burden of constant comparisons to His Airness. They rarely, if ever, had a chance to have their career achievements appreciated outside of the prism of what Jordan had done. Bryant needed an 81-point game and two Shaq-less rings for his Mamba Mentality to make him a legend in his own right. James needed to scratch off every possible statistical marker—most points scored, most buckets made, most minutes played, most All-Star appearances, most consecutive double-digit scoring games, and so on—for sustained excellence to place him in his own stratosphere."

Owen Lewis@owensports· Jan 7

0-10 since...

Kevin Garvey reading the line "yet I am not silenced by the darkness" from the Bible in the HBO show The Leftovers

Owen Lewis@owensports· Jan 4

Is this anything

Erin Quinn from Derry Girls skeptically reading "Shakespeare for Dummies"

Titular protagonist from Fleabag gasping at a passage from the Bible

Owen Lewis@owensports· Jul 11

I can think of a few compliments greater than that

A screenshot from a liveblog of Carlos Alcaraz's four-set win over Taylor Fritz in the Wimbledon semifinals: "This boy is a genius, what else do you want to know?! Fritz played what might be the match of his life, but every timer he got near Alcaraz pushed him away, his confidence and creativity like nothing we've ever seen before - Johnny Mac is closest, and there's no greater compliment than that. We are privileged to be living in his time, and he'll face Sinner or Djokovic on Sunday as he bids to win a third Wimbledon in a row. Currently, he's 5-0 in major finals."

Owen Lewis@owensports· May 15

Phrases like "Jannik Sinner played a message match" appearing under the New York Times URL will always be funny. The question of whether this stuff gets okayed by really shitty editors or no editors at all keeps me up at night.

A screenshot from a Matt Futterman article at The Athletic of the sentence "Jannik Sinner played a message match on Thursday evening at the Foro Italico in Rome, obliterating Casper Ruud, one of the top clay-court players, 6-0, 6-1 in 64 minutes."

Owen Lewis@owensports· Apr 3

Not the same format but this still makes me laugh

Owen Lewis@owensports· Mar 19

I talked to 14 of my favorite tennis writers for the piece. I interviewed Courtney second chronologically and she said something I immediately knew would be the last and best line of the article, which it remained and not for lack of competition.

A quote from tennis writer Courtney Nguyen: I might’ve tuned in because I liked a certain shot, or I liked a personality, or I saw an interview that I liked. But my favorite players have always been ones who I root for like they’re my friends. I’m like, “I just want you to be happy. Whether that’s wins or losses, I don’t know. But I just want you to be happy. And I hope you find your happiness.”

Owen Lewis@owensports· Feb 20

Periodic reminder that Tennis Letter is a blight on anything it touches defector.com/defector-blo...

Casper Ruud calling a quote falsely attributed to him in a post by The Tennis Letter "very bad and untrustworthy journalism"

Tennis Letter shirking responsibility and blaming the "source" they copied and pasted the quote from

Owen Lewis@owensports· Feb 19

ESPN washed?

A story I wrote for BoxingScene ranking the seven fights on a February 22 pay-per-view card. The story went up at 12:30 am on February 18 and begins with the line, "The February 22 pay-per-view card topped by Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol II is arguably the deepest boxing card in history."

An ESPN story also ranking the seven fights on the February 22nd pay-per-view, which went up at 7:33 am on February 18. The story begins, "Saturday's show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia has been hailed the best card boxing has ever seen -- and for good reason."

Owen Lewis@owensports· Feb 5

Carbonara

Slabs of pancetta cooking in their own fat and olive oil

Owen Lewis@owensports· Jan 27

For anybody wondering, nytimes.com liveblogs in the style of Tennis Letter's tweets is a trend.

Another clip from an Athletic tennis liveblog that relentlessly uses one-sentence paragraphs with no real insight.

Owen Lewis@owensports· Jan 27

I don't know about anyone else, but the one-two of the phrase "creates her way to a love hold" and "breathless" as its own paragraph is exactly what I want when I read blogs on nytimes.com.