WIMBLEDON – Pop!

It was early in the second set of the Wimbledon final, and perhaps a reveler in the Centre Court crowd knew something that Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz did not.

The Champagne cork flew far enough to land on the grass below, just a few paces from where Sinner was preparing to serve. I have never seen anything quite like it in all my years of covering Grand Slam finals, but the Italian, a ball still in his left hand, calmly plucked the projectile off the lawn with two fingers and handed it to a ball girl for disposal.

“Only here at Wimbledon,” Sinner said. “It’s an expensive tournament.”

At the time, a Sinner celebration at the All England Club was far from a sure thing. He was already down a set to Alcaraz, the same acrobatic and improvisational Spaniard who had beaten him five times in a row, canceling Sinner’s victory party in Paris last month by saving three match points and winning the French Open in five thrill-filled sets.

But Sinner was about to prove on Sunday that his dramatic Roland Garros setback did not break his spirit. Quite the contrary. It taught him valuable lessons, one of which was to seize the day before Alcaraz seized it instead. Holding back and waiting for an error would not get this job done.

“Today’s match, I think, was a match of moments,” said Darren Cahill, one of Sinner’s coaches. “Of just who was going to step up in the big moment and make something happen. At Roland Garros, it was Carlos, and today it was Jannik. So we could not be more proud of him.”

Sinner looked pretty pleased himself as he finished off this bounceback 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 6-4 victory, thrusting his long arms into the air after his final big first serve down the T sealed the deal on his second championship point.

He could have cracked after losing a 4-2 lead in the opening set. He could have cracked when it came time to serve for the second, or the third, or the match.

Nothing doing. He was as cool as the snow that covers his hometown of Sexten in the Dolomites in winter.

“I had a very tough loss in Paris,” he said, with the gilded Wimbledon men’s singles trophy glittering in his grasp. “But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter how you win or you lose, especially important tournaments. You just have to understand what you did wrong and try to work on that, and that’s exactly what we did. We tried to accept the loss and just kept working, and that is for sure one of the reasons why I hold this trophy here.”

He is the first Italian to win a Wimbledon singles title, succeeding where Matteo Berrettini and Jasmine Paolini came up just short in recent years. But then Sinner, still only 23 years old, is already the most successful Italian tennis player ever.

He has been No. 1 for 57 weeks and counting and now has four major singles titles: two Australian Opens, one US Open and one Wimbledon, which is his first on a surface other than hardcourt. If not for Alcaraz’s great escape in Paris, Sinner might well have been in position to aim for the true Grand Slam — the calendar-year Grand Slam — in New York this year. But we will of course never know how the pressure that goes with that quest might have affected him at Wimbledon.

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Sinner once risked not being here at all. His three-month ban for a doping violation, served earlier this year, came after the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed a ruling by an arbitration panel that had imposed no suspension. WADA initially said it was seeking “a period of ineligibility of between one and two years” with its appeal. Instead, it backed away from that, entered into negotiations with Sinner’s legal team, and imposed a shorter ban whose timing did not require him to miss any majors.

Once at Wimbledon, things also fell Sinner’s way. He was two sets down to Grigor Dimitrov in the fourth round when Dimitrov tore a pectoral muscle and had to retire at 2-2 in the third.

“The way Grigor was playing, if he continued to play at that level, then he was a good chance to close it out,” Cahill said. “But we in the box always had faith that Jannik was going to get himself out of that match. But yes, he caught a break. We kept reiterating to him that a Grand Slam, in men’s tennis, it’s seven matches best-of-five. Nobody goes through a tournament without a hiccup, whether it be an injury or a little bit of luck or you get yourself out of an early-round problem. Everybody has a story in a Grand Slam. Maybe this was going to be his story.”

So it turned out. Sinner never had to save a match point at this Wimbledon, never even got pushed to a fifth set, but it did feel like he had been given a second chance at splendor on the grass.

He capitalized yet did so the hard way: beating Novak Djokovic, a seven-time Wimbledon champion, in the semifinals and then Alcaraz, the two-time defending champion. Between them, Djokovic and Alcaraz had won the last six editions of the tournament, and Alcaraz was on a 20-match winning streak at the All England Club.

“You cannot win all the time,” Alcaraz said. “You have to accept that the other player sometimes can do much better than you.”

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Alcaraz could and should have some regrets, however. He and Sinner both came into the final putting 63 percent of their first serves in play. Sinner essentially maintained that on Sunday, finishing at 62 percent for the final, but Alcaraz slipped to 53 percent. That allowed Sinner too many chances to do what he does best -- return second serves – and he won nearly half of those points.

“I played against one of the best returners on tour, without a doubt,” Alcaraz said. “With the nerves and everything, it was difficult to serve better. I just have to improve that, yeah, absolutely.”

Alcaraz also missed some critical returns in his wheelhouse and probably should have found a way to spend more time at net, considering Sinner’s baseline prowess and Alcaraz’s phenomenal touch in the forecourt. The Spaniard won 12 of 14 serve-and-volley points, a tactic that has been a successful niche play for him during his reign at Wimbledon. But another of his signatures, the drop shot, was not as consistently effective on Sunday, even if he twice brought Sinner to his knees: the Italian slipping behind the baseline as he tried to push off and give chase.

But Sinner did not stay down for long, and this young rivalry is now even more irresistible. Lose on Sunday and Sinner would have trailed 3-6 in Grand Slam titles. Instead it is 4-5 heading into the US Open, a major that both men have won once but where Sinner will likely be the favorite given his hardcourt prowess.

“Today was important for many, many reasons,” Cahill said. “Jannik needed that win today, so he knew the importance of closing this one out when he had the opportunities. With that, I think you saw a bit more energy from him in the big moments and a bit more focus to knuckle down and make sure that when he had his nose in front that he kept closing the door against Carlos.”

Sinner slammed shut the second set with a brilliant, bold game that featured three groundstroke winners, including a backhand off the slide on the opening point after he tracked down a fine Alcaraz drop volley.

Serving at 2-3 in the third, Sinner shrugged off missing an overhead after making a highlight-reel reflex volley between the legs and finished off the hold with an ace. At 3-4, Alcaraz got to 30-all on Sinner’s serve with a drop-lob combination but Sinner came up with a second-serve ace wide on the next point and then a first-serve ace wide to hold before breaking Alcaraz in the next game.

In the fourth, Sinner broke Alcaraz in the third game with consecutive backhand winners down the line, the last a bolt of a return off a second serve. Sinner maintained that slim edge, fighting off two more break points from 15-40 in the eighth game.

That put the Italian up two sets to one and 5-3, the same lead he had held and surrendered at Roland Garros. Watching from the press seats, it was impossible not to wonder if Sinner was as acutely aware of the symmetry. But while Alcaraz did hold to 5-4, Sinner put an end to the parallels by jumping out to a 40-0 lead and finishing off the victory two points later.

What happens in Paris apparently stays in Paris, and Alcaraz was soon offering his warm congratulations to Sinner at the net. They are, for now and maybe much longer, friendly rivals: taking their cue from Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the last men to play in back-to-back French Open and Wimbledon finals.

Like Federer and Nadal for much of the 2000s, Sinner and Alcaraz are a duopoly. A third man, Djokovic, changed the power structure for Federer and Nadal, and a third or fourth man could do the same again in the 2020s.

“The rivalry I think is amazing already, and I think it can get better with both these players pushing each other,” Cahill said. “I do think there’s some other younger players coming through that will punch their way through the door, so it won’t just be a two-man show.”

Perhaps Jack Draper, Jakub Mensik, Ben Shelton, Lorenzo Musetti, Arthur Fils or Joao Fonseca. Perhaps someone even younger still working his way up to the tour. But for now Sinner and Alcaraz are hoarding the loot. They have combined to win seven majors in a row, and on Sunday evening, it was Sinner’s turn to show off the spoils on the balcony of the All England Club to the cosmopolitan throng gathered below.

It is one of the most stirring views in sports, and when Sinner returned indoors, Sally Bolton, the club’s chief executive, respectfully informed the new champion (and new club member) that she would need to repossess the trophy but that he would soon be given the customary replica.

“No rush,” Sinner said politely. “But I would like to have it.”

Until then, Champagne all around.

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