Borg v McEnroe 1980, Wimbledon. Nadal v Federer 2008, Wimbledon. Alcaraz v Sinner 2025, Roland Garros. Last night in Paris, a 22-year-old Spaniard and a 23-year-old Italian played their way into the tennis pantheon.

At five hours and 29 minutes it was the longest match in French Open history — and quite possibly the best.

Jannik Sinner is the greatest player in the world. Unfortunately for him, Carlos Alcaraz is not of this world. He is a being of shooting stars and comets and he pulled off the greatest comeback in the 148-year history of Grand Slam tennis.

Alcaraz trailed by two sets to love — a scoreline he had never come back from in his career. In the fourth set he was 5-3 and 40-0 down, facing three championship points. And he won.

He won with fearless aggression and peerless finesse. He won despite 79 unforced errors and thanks to 70 winners.

He won 4-6, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 7-6 to defend his title and remain unbeaten through five Grand Slam finals. He won to extend

his run of success against his greatest rival to five matches. He became the first man in history to save three match points and win a Grand Slam title.

For Sinner, a first defeat in his fourth Grand Slam final — and if he plays on for 15 years he will suffer none more agonising.

Adoration will be heaped on Alcaraz in the coming days but we must remember it was a cramping Sinner’s refusal to bow down in the final set which elevated this match from greatness to immortality.

This was the first meeting of Sinner and Alcaraz in a Grand Slam final and the hype was stratospheric. The 15,000 fans on Philippe Chatrier and millions watching on TV were expecting a match which would rubber-stamp this rivalry as a successor to legends of the past. An impossible billing that was somehow surpassed.

Let us try to chart the eddies and currents of this extraordinary tennis match.

Alcaraz started the sharper of the two, but went into one of his wobbly patches: three unforced errors to be broken back, then four unforced errors at 4-5 to concede the break and the set.

Sinner settled into his relentless rhythms and when Alcaraz went 2-0 down in the second set, the Chatrier crowd became uneasy: this was not the epic they had been promised.

Alcaraz was error-strewn and reckless, Sinner dialled in and lethal.

For the ninth time in his career, Alcaraz fell two sets down: he had lost the previous eight.

When Sinner broke in the first game of the third set the title was ever so close but at the brink of disaster Alcaraz blazed into life, rolling through the next four games.

He closed out the set and stood stock still, finger to his ear as the crowd roared, baying for an epic.

That set snapped a run of 31 consecutive sets in Grand Slams for Sinner, stretching back to the fourth round of the Australian Open.

In the fourth set both men brought their best level. Sinner broke with some lasered groundstrokes and at 3-5, 0-40, with Alcaraz serving, he had three championship points.

But the problem with facing Alcaraz is, you never know when the force will awaken. Like the T-rex in Jurassic Park, he looks as though he’s sleeping but then the eye snaps open and it’s time to run for your life.

He flew at Sinner like a whirlwind, winning 13 of the next 14 points. He did not do anything particularly special on the three championship points, just locked in and refused to miss.

The one which will keep Sinner awake at night was a missed backhand return off a second serve, a stroke he had been punching deep and true all match.

Sinner was beginning to fray at the edges, slapping two forehands into the bottom of the net.

The Italian’s team were on their feet after every point he won now, in an effort to transmit some energy on to the court, and their man clung on to force another tiebreak.

From 2-0 down Alcaraz rifled a forehand winner then struck consecutive aces, just his fifth and sixth of the match — some timing.

Leading 6-3, Alcaraz swung a forehand into the opening court and the set, somehow, was his.

The first point of the decider brought a ragged error from the forehand of Sinner, who looked to be wilting physically.

Was the lack of match toughness — he had dropped not a single set this fortnight —beginning to tell?

What about the effects of that three-month absence from competition as he served a ban for unintentional doping?

As Alcaraz broke with a knifing backhand drop shot, Sinner literally hobbled to his chair to change ends.

Surely the match was done now — Sinner could barely move. The drop shot is Alcaraz’s favourite club but it had largely stayed in the bag until now. With Sinner physically compromised, Alcaraz brought it out like a torturer reaching for his scalpel.

And yet Sinner clung on, and when Alcaraz came to serve out the match he was in peril at 15-30 down.

He hit a superb drop shot, surely a winner, but Sinner made the sprint of his life and, when he got there, the touch of his life to feather it back over for a winner. With physical reserves draining and emotional stability long since departed, all these two had left was their talent and the final crescendoed in a blaze of shotmaking.

Alcaraz was two points from defeat at 5-6, 30-30 but he lunged deep and wide to send a forehand slice skimming at a diagonal into the opposite corner, a shot that seemed to change its mind from defence to attack mid-flight.

Sinner pinned a backhand return on the line. Alcaraz, from downtown, hit an impossible angle of a backhand pass.

In the championship tiebreak — first to 10, rather than the usual seven — Alcaraz focused his fire on the deep forehand corner where Sinner’s physical issues were most pronounced.

A match like this deserved to be won by a winner and it was, Alcaraz swerving a passing shot around the onrushing Sinner. An immaculate tiebreak, won by 10 points to two.

Sinner is a master of precision and fundamentals and, nearly always, that is what modern men’s tennis is about. But once in a while it is about genius and inspiration and this was such a day.

The best match ever? To each his own to judge. But what played out in that final half-hour… I have never seen tennis like it in 25 years watching this grand old game.

Before we go — do we really have to go? — credit to both men for refusing to take the customary bathroom break in an attempt to snap an opponent’s momentum.

They both stayed on the court for the whole five-and-a-half hours and that meant the drama of the match was never interrupted, the magic never broken.

To Alcaraz and Sinner, heartfelt thanks. And also a save-the-date: July 13, Centre Court, Wimbledon, SW19 — let’s do it all over again.