Sincaraz Rivalry

Have you ever wondered how the mind of a genius works? No.. i'm not only talking about someone who can quickly answer what 6060 x 1234 is, Moreover—how an athlete anticipates an opponent's movement and reacts to their surroundings, how musician composes something so beautifully, or someone who can connect the dots in their head within a second while digesting a lot of information at the same time—these are also considered as acts of genius.

A few years back, I wrote a piece called "The Genius Of Our Brains" 

In that writing, I briefly discussed individuals who are cognitively gifted, enabling them to doing tasks beyond general human capability. Furthermore, a gifted person also often excels at performing ordinary, everyday activities too.

For the last few months (and still going!), i have been obsessed with playing tennis. It's not just on the court; off the court, I have been keeping up with the tennis world, mainly through the major tournaments and ofc Tiktok. FYI, the tennis world right now is basically dominated by two South European guys: Jannik Sinner from Italy and Carlos Alcaraz from Spain. Their rivalry is seriously intense, some have even joked it has become romantic, lol.

One fascinating fact about these two? The points gap from the #3 rank to the #2 rank is actually bigger than the gap down to the #100 rank—it's even closer to zero than to #2 rank. 

Plus, Jannik Sinner used to be a National Ski athlete and only switched careers to tennis when he was 13. In my theory, most prodigies discovered their talent and were nurtured from a super young age—so Sinner is definitely an exception, especially since he won his first major title at 17, just four years after his pro debut.

Same deal with Alcaraz. Not only is his tennis game ridiculously good, but he also plays golf and football (soccer)—and he doesn't just play them for fun, he is seriously, seriously talented at those too."

Enough with the stats and facts, what really blows my mind about these two guys is how they manage to deliver such mind-blowing performances on the court.

In any sport, especially tennis, you can't just rely on power and stamina—things like predicting your opponent’s moves, controlling the rally tempo, and knowing exactly when to use the right technique are huge factors in winning points. Sure, there are tons of talented players out there who get all these theories and practicing techniques thousands of times—but still Sinner and Alcaraz easily crush them all.

This leads us to the biggest question: 'What exactly is going on inside the minds of these tennis geniuses during the match?'"

My answer is: I don't know. Even if you ask them the same question, they would probably react with template answers such as "train a lot," "be consistent," "not underestimate the opponent," etc. But that's not the case. Every other great player also trains like crazy, is consistent (maybe even above Sinner and Alcaraz themselves), and does the other hard work—yet they're still not even close to Sinner and Alcaraz's level—and that's exactly the proof of genius: to have something someone else doesn't, and it cannot be obtained manually.

I want to close this topic by quoting a line from one of my favorite movies: Good Will Hunting.

There's a scene where Skylar and Will are on a date in a cafe discussing organic chemistry. It is a topic that Skylar, as a medical student, finds very hard to learn, yet Will can effortlessly do the work without ever having attended college. Skylar asks Will two questions:

Skylar: Do you have a photographic memory?

Will: I don't know. I just kind of remember, you know. I mean, how do you remember your phone number? You just do.

Skylar: You know, there are very smart people here at Harvard, and even they have to study because this is really hard (organic chemistry)—and yet you do it so easily. I can't understand how your mind works.

Will: Did you play the piano? When Mozart or Beethoven look at a piano, it just makes sense to them; they could just play. I couldn't paint you a picture, I probably can't hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can't play the piano. But when it comes to stuff like that (organic chemistry), I could always just play.