Sometimes in New York it gets late, early. Flushing, on Sunday, was no different. Even before the show started at the halfway-historic men’s singles final of the 2024 U.S. Open, there was a healthy dose of red-white-and-blue showmanship. An early-era American Idol winner crooned “America the Beautiful,” as the stars and stripes were unfurled across the hard court of Arthur Ashe Stadium. This occurred directly in front of many thousands of Americans (and a few million more at home), all of whom chose to watch it over an array of choice offerings from the first weekend of our most American pastime, in the hope of spotting something hideously rare at the Open: a native son winning the title.

That was the pitch, anyway. Taylor Fritz—a real, Cali-born, red-blooded, 26-year-old, Hugo Boss–sponsored, American male—the first in the U.S. Open final since Andy Roddick bowed out in four sets in 2006. Then the tune stopped and they put the flag away. Top-seeded Italian RPM-maven Jannik Sinner poked his head out from behind the net and the awakening got all rude. Three sets, two hours, 16 minutes. We call that, “Grand opening, grand closing,” on this side.

You know a trouncing when you see it. Folks get flushed or get quiet—or in this case, do both. For the first time in an entire fortnight at Ashe, traffic, birds, and wind could be heard in between points. From every angle, every shot, every portion of the court, Sinner dismantled Fritz; deconstructed his strengths into liabilities and his liabilities into miniature deaths, each one carrying the cumulative tragedy of the last. Incompatible as the concept may seem, at its apex of power and skill, tennis begins to mirror a fighting sport. A victor can bludgeon, wear down, or evade an opponent. Only one of these outcomes truly disrupts the viewer—manages to hit the same pressure points on-court as off. Beat ’em down bad enough and everybody gets shook.

It was all strangely precipitated. Djokovic, Alcaraz, Gauff, Osaka—a 1-seed here, a 4-seed there. All but a few stars were yanked out of the sky. In darkness lay a once-every-few decades opportunity. Call it fluky, an Olympic-year hangover, whatever comes to mind: The only certainty at the People’s Tournament in 2024 was that anyone could certainly get rocked.

By the semis, on one side of the men’s bracket, this pattern had guaranteed, for the first time in 18 years, an American finalist. The wackiest tournament in decades had brought an end to the great nadir; left the door for an American man halfway-cracked. Fritz, the 12th-ranked player in the world, with his blistering serve and aptitude for nervy volleys, sauntered on through after a five-set showdown with fellow countryman and Open staple Frances Tiafoe. On the other side of the draw, the chaos proved to be Sinner’s own avenue. In the throes of a PED scandal, at the most combustible moment of his young career, a path materialized for the 23-year-old Italian to obscure the noise.

Sinner’s fait accompli stretched over three, set-length symphonic movements. In the first, he introduced Fritz to a characteristic barrage of screwball forehands, sent supercharged and from various planes. Sinner’s serve was ruthlessly precise and ludicrously angled. From a certain viewpoint, the shot—a focus of steady improvement over the years—is so diagonal in nature, applying so much leverage into the earth, that its author begins to look like a felled tree in mid-plummet. Sinner spreads his legs as a frog might, just as he hits the ball, leveraging all that momentum, weight, and force into even more serving torque.

In the few high-leverage moments of the second set he leaned on an assemblage of instinctual groundstrokes. His hands are his weapon of choice: his ability to pull them in just-so at just the right moment to neutralize an incoming volley. Sometimes the effect is visceral—the thump of Sinner’s forehand and the echo it leaves as a rebuttal to the few “USA” chants that cropped up in sequences of relative tension. Other times they appear in delicate form: three drop shots in the second set alone, deployed to tremendous effect.

The third set’s opening game was the match in steady microcosm. Fritz traded three break points for thin air, the press box contingent crossed out their collective notes, and everyone sat and watched Sinner manage a five-point swing off pure guile, steel, and championship familiarity. Whether sliding around like some long-legged foal, nimbly defusing Fritz’s high-speed volleys, or simply putting racket to 130-mph-plus serves, Sinner spent the later moments of the match deflecting desperate blow after desperate blow.

The moment was itself a culmination of two divergent journeys for two distinctive competitors, in a post–Big Three era food chain. Sinner—having already climbed from middle-class beginnings in a German-speaking Italian mountain town on the Austrian border, to an unrivaled perch in the history of Italian tennis—was looking to solidify his standing as the unlikely premier athlete in a global football and motorsport-obsessed nation. Fritz, whose parents are both professional tennis players, is one in a cadre of players hewn from the American tennis-industrial complex’s decades-long attempt to forge a champion, in the wake of the combined retirements of Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. Born in California but molded at the USTA’s junior camp in Boca Raton, Fritz has steadily worked himself up to this point and had moments in which his trajectory looked legitimately in doubt. He might never have been the highest-ceiling male prospect, but might always have had the highest floor.

What this final made clear is that there is, today, a vast gap between what Sinner and the best American men have to offer. Skill-wise, Fritz had no answer for the Italian’s anticipation, implausible flexibility, and ever-present topspin. Sinner’s uncommon understanding of his own physical strengths—sheer height, a Mr. Fantastic wingspan, limited agility, and seemingly unlimited stride length—set him apart. His competitive mindset, the pace at which he moves and refuses to be moved, is the part of his game most often compared to another Central European showman. After two Grand Slam wins and 14 weeks atop the world ranking, Sinner might not be in a league of his own, but he’s clearly out of Fritz’s.

The “unintended” steroid exposure of it all, though, is what makes that narrative thornier. Is Sinner tennis’s new, red-haired villain? Misunderstood? Something in between? He’s a notorious under-sharer when it comes to his private life, beliefs, and attitudes—a wrench in characterizing him one way or another. The knowns: He’s a bit of a tennis cyborg. He says his nirvana is to “train serenely,” whatever that means. In April, he told Vogue, of his on-court kinks: “I like to dance in the pressure storm.” After he won the Aussie Open in February he said he “didn’t drink, because it’s not good for the body,” and his first thoughts on the plane ride back to Italy were some variation of, “how I could improve even more.”

One way you could interpret this is by calling him careful, calculated, image-conscious, or PR-trained. Another way you could interpret it is by calling Sinner a slightly shy, mop-haired, multilingual, 23-year-old tennis star. The question—for this year, this Open, and this champion—is less Is he a villain? and more Are we going to make him one? Once the image of a star in an individual sport takes hold, good or bad, it can be next to impossible to uproot. Can the global sporting community process that Sinner’s clostebol entanglement was (as even tennis’s preeminent statesman has said) handled poorly and that he had no ultimate control over said handling? That such is the level of uncertainty bound to arise in an imprecise, hypersensitive system, meant to police people who have shown themselves repeatedly willing to push the edge personally, professionally, and physically for the chance to be a shot better than whoever they see on the other side of a net.

At Ashe on Sunday, nobody seemed all that invested in building Sinner up or breaking him down. The crowd wanted an American to win. (Though, if we’re being honest, probably not this American.) They may have gone into the match geared up for a villain, but what they got was simply efficient, rehearsed—some might even say robotic—excellence.

By the 10th game in the third set, after two hours of willowy drop shots, backbreaking forehands, bomber body serves and defensive grace, folks could pretty clearly see what the deal was. Fritz had scratched his way to a chance to serve for the set. For the first time all afternoon, the momentum swirled behind him. The place was rowdy. Applause had a mind of its own.

Then he blew it: didn’t so much fall as he was picked apart. Sinner conjured, from the shadow of his first real failure of the day, another break point. Lobbed a dainty little dropshot into Fritz’s right service box, which begat a sliding underhanded volley from Fritz, a violent backhand slice response from Sinner, all of which culminated in a failed forehand stab by Fritz, straight into the white of the net.

Sinner held the next game, because of course he did, and Fritz was left serving to force a playoff that no one—in the stands, in the LED glow of TVs worldwide, on the lonely hard court itself—actually believed would happen. Fritz double-faulted to open: 15-0. Then came a backbreaking Sinner forehand: 30-0. A tense little rally from both men cut it to 30-15, but then Fritz smoked a return off a Sinner volley that had no right to even be possible in the first place.

40-15. Nothing but spooky, still silence. Then came an 81 mph second serve, followed by a 16-shot rally, resulting—once more—in the most familiar emotion prompted by the two-hour-and-16 minute dismantling of the best hope for male American tennis in the better part of two decades: utter and complete exasperation.

Roll up the flag. For at least another year, throw Fritz, and all other potential hopes, in with it. The lanky Italian raised his hands, palms out, in the air. The gleaming chalice was incoming.

“Give it up for Jannik Sinner,” the loudspeaker soon after crooned, “your U.S. Open champion.”