Jannik Sinner didn’t even want to accept a settlement. Throughout his doping saga, the No. 1 player in the world has proclaimed his innocence. He has said that he took all necessary precautions, and it was only due to the neglect of his support staff that he ended up with the anabolic steroid clostebol in his system. You probably know the story by now, but here’s a reminder of the colorful details. He maintains that his physiotherapist treated a wound on his own finger using a topical spray that contained clostebol; the physiotherapist used that same hand to give Sinner massages; the clostebol got into Sinner’s bloodstream via tiny sores on the player’s skin. The World Anti-Doping Agency, however, sought a ban of one to two years. In the end, Sinner’s legal team convinced the player that it was worth accepting a settlement instead of going back to court, prolonging the process, and risking a much longer ban. And so Jannik, who had just won the Australian Open, took the deal and sat out a three-month chunk of the 2025 season.

It was a convenient chunk of the season, in that Sinner missed no major tournaments, and the first event upon his return to tour would be Rome, where he would enjoy the raucous support of his home crowd. But the suspension was also a profoundly strange time in his life. For the first two months of his suspension, Sinner was subject to strict restrictions on what he could do and where he could appear—even as a mere fan. Though he wanted to spend some of his downtime watching his friends compete in motocross and cycling, he learned he was not even allowed to attend official sporting events. As for tennis, he could not train on courts that were associated with the professional tour, or with any national tennis federation, ruling out pretty much all of his usual haunts. He had to seek out private facilities. He also could not train with any active professional players. But like any tennis player, he had to find a suitable partner. Suddenly the world’s top player was in the same conundrum as a weekend warrior looking for a decent hit.

As it turned out, Sinner had received a message from an old acquaintance: Roberto Marcora, the former world No. 150, who is 12 years his elder and long gone from the tour. Marcora half-jokingly offered his services as a sparring partner. Soon enough, Sinner’s team reached out to him, and they weren’t joking at all. Marcora’s name had to be submitted to WADA for official approval. Because he’d last played professionally at Indian Wells in 2023, Marcora was deemed inactive by the authorities, and they were good to go. In an interview with TennisTalker, Marcora described hitting with an even more advanced version of the kid who had already beaten him in a Challenger final back when Jannik was 17. He said it felt like practicing with Djokovic, but with more power.

After April 13, some of the suspension restrictions were relaxed. Sinner could train with his old pals again. A few days later he was seen hitting with Jack Draper, who was in the midst of a breakout season. The following week, Draper blazed to the final in Madrid, but Sinner was still watching the tour from afar. He made his official return to competition in Rome. In a press conference before the tournament, Sinner did something that shocked me more than any drug test results could. This strenuously private man offered an unprompted update on his romantic life. He’d recently been photographed with the model Lara Lieto, but he took a moment to assure the assembled press that he was in fact single and ready to mingle: “I was also very surprised to see some pictures, which—nothing serious, let’s say it like this: I’m not in a relationship.” Had someone taken our robotic, reticent Jannik and replaced him with this grinning playboy? Or perhaps he was just feeling a lot freer with the doping stress behind him.

Back on court, Sinner picked up right where he left off: beating everyone in sight. It looked as though the stringent limits of his suspension hadn’t detracted much from his game. He murdered his opponents in a tennis-goth, all-black outfit. “I believe it suits me quite well. I like not the yellow and orange and these very bright colors. I like more the darker colors,” he remarked—a clear contrast to his foil Carlos Alcaraz, who often opts for candy-colored kits. On one of his off days during the tournament, Sinner slipped into a dark suit and went to the Vatican to meet the newly named Pope Leo XIV, who loves to play and watch tennis. Sinner gave him a racquet as a gift and offered to volley a bit. The Pope looked around at all the precious objects in the room and decided against it.

The following day, the post-pope Sinner administered a 6–0, 6–1 beatdown to Casper Ruud, the sort of rout you rarely see between two top 10 players. Sinner was so comically, excessively good that Ruud described his play as “next-level shit” and admitted it was “almost fun to witness.” At this point I began to wonder if the three months of rest had in fact given Sinner a leg up on the competition. My speculation cooled off two rounds later, in the final, against Alcaraz, who had dominated the clay season up to that point. This was the most narratively satisfying way for Sinner to return to the tour: a title fight against his archrival, on Alcaraz’s best surface. Sinner stayed neck and neck in the first set, earning himself set points, only to let them slip away. He faded out quickly in the second set. That made four consecutive losses to Alcaraz since the start of 2024. Sinner had suffered only three other losses to the whole rest of the tour during that same span. But he appeared quite happy and relaxed after the match. After all, this was arguably the most challenging test in tennis, and he left it realizing he was “closer than expected” to his goal, despite all that time in exile.

In his runner-up remarks, Sinner paid Alcaraz a compliment: He would be the favorite at Roland-Garros. As we approach the tournament’s last weekend, that may still be true. Alcaraz has lost some sets here and there, but his peak level, seen in his last two rounds against Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul, has been astounding. Sinner, meanwhile, hasn’t dropped a single set through five matches and is barely losing games as of late. They are the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, sitting on opposite sides of the draw, and they might finally meet in a major final. They have been hurtling toward such a match for quite some time, and it is the most appealing prospect in men’s tennis, though having just spent way too much time thinking about these two dudes, I’m quite biased. The dream final might be just a few days away…unless Novak Djokovic interferes with the proceedings.