Sinner hits 20th straight

Jannik Sinner is now carrying a 20-match winning streak across ATP Masters 1000 events, and he pushed it to that number on Friday, April 10, by beating Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-3, 6-4 in the Monte Carlo quarterfinals. The win put him into a semifinal against Alexander Zverev at the first clay-court Masters 1000 stop of the season. (atptour.com) Masters 1000 events sit one rung below the four Grand Slam tournaments, and Monte Carlo is one of the three played on clay. That matters because clay slows the ball, stretches rallies, and usually gives defenders more time to turn points around. (atptour.com) Sinner’s streak did not start in Monaco. ATP Tour records show it began at the Paris Masters in late 2025 and carried through the 2026 hard-court swing before arriving on clay this week. (tennis.com) That run puts him in narrow company. Tennis.com reported that only Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal had previously reached 20 straight men’s singles wins at Masters 1000 level since the format began in 1990. (tennis.com) The Monte Carlo result itself was clean and short. ATP Tour scoring lists the match at 1 hour, 32 minutes, with Sinner never dropping a set and never letting Auger-Aliassime get the match into a deciding third. (atptour.com) The quarterfinal was also a test against a player who had just taken out Casper Ruud, one of the tour’s most established clay-court names, before facing Sinner. Auger-Aliassime reached the last eight after Ruud retired in their round-of-16 match. (atptour.com) Monte Carlo has been one of the few big stops where Sinner was still chasing a breakthrough. ATP Tour preview material for the event said he had already made two semifinals there, but had never won the title. (atptour.com) Now the draw has turned into the matchup the tournament was pointing toward on Sinner’s side. The official singles draw showed him advancing into a semifinal with Zverev, while Carlos Alcaraz sat on the opposite half as the top seed. (atptour.com) That is why this quarterfinal landed with more weight than a routine straight-sets win. A player who built his Masters streak on hard courts is now taking the same control into the slowest part of the calendar, and the next names in his path are Zverev in the semifinal and potentially Alcaraz in the final. (atptour.com)