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rhodochrositecompilation of narrative parallels between jannik sinner & oscar piastri. quotes pulled from changeover - giri nathan & oscar piastri: the rookie - andrew van leeuwen.
also re/reading these books side by side was seriously hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby mr nathan are you interested in motorsports...
rapid career progression prioritised over junior era wins
For all his talent, Sinner wasn't a hyped junior player. That's because he was looking past the boys' tournaments, his eyes already fixed on the grown-up tour. "Playing juniors didn't interest me very much and I always wanted to make ATP points," he said in 2019, immediately after winning his first Challenger title in Bergamo, Italy, at age 17. That was just the fourth Challenger event he'd entered, and he hadn't won a single match in any of his previous tries.
/
For Piastri, karting—the traditional first step on the motor-racing ladder—was never about filling the trophy cabinet. It was about getting somewhere. As fast as possible… Piastri could have been more patient, stuck around in each class a bit longer and won a lot more titles and trophies. But trophies didn't matter. Success was measured on how much Piastri was outperforming the standard trajectory and how quickly Sera could get him into the next class.
intuitive technical optimisation
It is a question of technique, smoothly synchronizing every muscle in the body, from the foot to the torso to the forearm, to meet the ball with the dead center of the racquet, in its “sweet spot.” To track a fast-approaching sphere, intuit its trajectory, and start a swing at just the right moment to strike it cleanly—this is known as timing. Sinner has perfect timing the way a singer might have perfect pitch.
/
'With go-karting there's obviously a racing line around each track, which is the fastest way around each corner—but a lot of people don't understand that when they first start out. But you could see Oscar knew how that worked; he understood what the racing line was. It looked like he'd been driving for years.'
curiosity with clear intention
A technical detail that might take others six months to learn, he would handle in a week. Whenever he asked a question, it was aimed with purpose. He wanted to know the rationale behind every drill.
/
'He's extremely smart and mature for his age. Extremely smart… He was asking a lot of questions to understand how to do that and why they are doing it and observing what they are doing. It was very impressive.'
//
This put some pressure on coaches; Jannik was not a pupil who could be pacified with generic drivel. “You need to be very careful what to say to him on the court. You need to be very secure! If you tell him something, don’t tell something wrong or stupid,” Cvjetkovic recalled. “He was the type of kid that if you ask him 100 questions, he will give you 100 precise answers.” About food, about practice, about who he wanted to practice with, he was always lucid and direct.
/
'[Oscar's] certainly focused and also demanding. This characteristic you can see already. The focus goes into being demanding to the team… The way he gets to the bottom of matters and is even questioning like, "Why did you guys do this? You could have done that. You could have done this." Somehow he challenges you, if that makes sense, in a very polite and constructive way. But he doesn't take things superficially or stop challenging [you] just for pleasing the environment.'
calm and composed, makes it look easy
After winning a 25-shot rally against Alcaraz at the 2023 Miami Open—possibly the best point of the decade, full of desperation and ingenuity—Sinner allowed himself a waggle of the fingers on one hand. I am not sure the pinky even moved. For him the goal seems never to leave a narrow band of calm, never to spike up or dip down out of the optimal emotional range for performance.
/
'One of his greatest abilities is how he stays calm and relaxed. Even in difficult moments. When you see him in person, you would never say, "Oh, there's somebody that will destroy everybody." But when he gets in the car, he's a machine.'
//
Cvjetkovic remembered Sinner as a child with an unusual capacity for work, and an unusual gift for simplifying that work.
/
'And the interesting point of Oscar is that he's making all this look simple. You know, he's making it look simple that in these conditions you pit, you lead the race and you go from inters to dry and you never make a mistake. And all this is achieved with a pretty unique approach in terms of how calm he is, and considerate.'
undaunted when battling a world champion
Standing on the court afterward, he said with a coy smile that he wouldn’t be disclosing his tactics, because he hoped to play his elder again and again. He was that rare young player who genuinely craved more encounters with Novak Djokovic, like a sheep that had developed a taste for wolf.
/
That left Piastri in the box seat, but winning would require a flawless final few laps. Forget that there's a now three-time world champion chasing you down. You cannot make a single mistake.
Piastri, of course, didn't blink. He still had two seconds up his sleeve.
celebrations tempered with endless desire to self-evaluate and improve
And yet here was Sinner, a sedate counterexample. A new, clearer picture of the Italian began to unfurl. Someone who came late to tennis, was never cornered into it, was at little risk of burnout compared to his peers, and instead maintained a gluttonous appetite for improvement. Even with the trophy sitting in front of his face, he was talking about next steps. “It’s a great moment for me and my team,” he said. “But in the other way, we also know that we have to improve if we want to have another chance to hold a big trophy again.”
/
When later asked if he was proud of what he had achieved in 2023, Piastri said, 'It's definitely been a great season. A lot of highlights that I wouldn't have been able to achieve without the team improving the car. But also, I guess to pat myself on the back, I had to deliver in those moments, too. That's probably my proudest moment—Silverstone, where we rocked up in a car that was competitive [and] I was able to get the most out of it. Japan, not my finest race, but I did enough to score my first podium. And Qatar, we had one opportunity, really, in the whole year to actually win something, and we managed to take it. For me, I can be very proud of that.'
But it wouldn't be Piastri without he himself adding a bit of balance to the discussion. '[There were] definitely some trickier weekends,' he continued. 'And things to work on as a whole season. You don't win championships by one or two weekends. I know that from my junior career. So I just need to make that happen more often.'
//
Even as a kid he was analytical rather than starstruck: “He was never the one who was using this [practice session] to be impressed. He was always the one who was doing this to understand where I need to be in three years, in four years, in five years,” Cvjetkovic said.
/
Piastri, in his calculating, analytical style, was more worried about his own shortcomings on tyre management than the undercut.
//
How would he celebrate? Many players lose their inhibitions to joy and hurl themselves forcefully at the ground. Upon completion of this childhood dream, Sinner responsibly and gently lowered himself onto his butt, using both hands for support, and then rolled back to assume the traditional starfish of relief.
/
In typical Piastri style, there were no hysterics about his Qatar weekend as he faced the media in the post-race press conference. But he did use some strong language that suggested what it meant to him. Words like 'exceptional'. Phrases like 'close to perfect'. Fair enough, given he'd just had the sort of weekend that dreams are made of.
addicted to the grind
This evolved Sinner was one of the tour’s most balanced players, in every sense of that word: on both forehand and backhand, serve and return, defense and offense. And yet, according to a certain reductive but pervasive fan perspective, the scoreboard was clear: one major title versus two major titles. Get to work, kid.
Of course, nobody was more amenable to that imperative than Jannik himself.
/
'It's the rapidity with which he learns that I think makes him exceptional. And this has been true in whatever scale you take: within the timeframe of a race, within the timeframe of an event, within the timeframe of the season. His gradient is so impressive, which obviously creates expectation for next season. And expectations require work to be [realised]. But the good thing with Oscar is that he's such a grounded person, he's so committed.'
also re/reading these books side by side was seriously hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby mr nathan are you interested in motorsports...
rapid career progression prioritised over junior era wins
For all his talent, Sinner wasn't a hyped junior player. That's because he was looking past the boys' tournaments, his eyes already fixed on the grown-up tour. "Playing juniors didn't interest me very much and I always wanted to make ATP points," he said in 2019, immediately after winning his first Challenger title in Bergamo, Italy, at age 17. That was just the fourth Challenger event he'd entered, and he hadn't won a single match in any of his previous tries.
/
For Piastri, karting—the traditional first step on the motor-racing ladder—was never about filling the trophy cabinet. It was about getting somewhere. As fast as possible… Piastri could have been more patient, stuck around in each class a bit longer and won a lot more titles and trophies. But trophies didn't matter. Success was measured on how much Piastri was outperforming the standard trajectory and how quickly Sera could get him into the next class.
intuitive technical optimisation
It is a question of technique, smoothly synchronizing every muscle in the body, from the foot to the torso to the forearm, to meet the ball with the dead center of the racquet, in its “sweet spot.” To track a fast-approaching sphere, intuit its trajectory, and start a swing at just the right moment to strike it cleanly—this is known as timing. Sinner has perfect timing the way a singer might have perfect pitch.
/
'With go-karting there's obviously a racing line around each track, which is the fastest way around each corner—but a lot of people don't understand that when they first start out. But you could see Oscar knew how that worked; he understood what the racing line was. It looked like he'd been driving for years.'
curiosity with clear intention
A technical detail that might take others six months to learn, he would handle in a week. Whenever he asked a question, it was aimed with purpose. He wanted to know the rationale behind every drill.
/
'He's extremely smart and mature for his age. Extremely smart… He was asking a lot of questions to understand how to do that and why they are doing it and observing what they are doing. It was very impressive.'
//
This put some pressure on coaches; Jannik was not a pupil who could be pacified with generic drivel. “You need to be very careful what to say to him on the court. You need to be very secure! If you tell him something, don’t tell something wrong or stupid,” Cvjetkovic recalled. “He was the type of kid that if you ask him 100 questions, he will give you 100 precise answers.” About food, about practice, about who he wanted to practice with, he was always lucid and direct.
/
'[Oscar's] certainly focused and also demanding. This characteristic you can see already. The focus goes into being demanding to the team… The way he gets to the bottom of matters and is even questioning like, "Why did you guys do this? You could have done that. You could have done this." Somehow he challenges you, if that makes sense, in a very polite and constructive way. But he doesn't take things superficially or stop challenging [you] just for pleasing the environment.'
calm and composed, makes it look easy
After winning a 25-shot rally against Alcaraz at the 2023 Miami Open—possibly the best point of the decade, full of desperation and ingenuity—Sinner allowed himself a waggle of the fingers on one hand. I am not sure the pinky even moved. For him the goal seems never to leave a narrow band of calm, never to spike up or dip down out of the optimal emotional range for performance.
/
'One of his greatest abilities is how he stays calm and relaxed. Even in difficult moments. When you see him in person, you would never say, "Oh, there's somebody that will destroy everybody." But when he gets in the car, he's a machine.'
//
Cvjetkovic remembered Sinner as a child with an unusual capacity for work, and an unusual gift for simplifying that work.
/
'And the interesting point of Oscar is that he's making all this look simple. You know, he's making it look simple that in these conditions you pit, you lead the race and you go from inters to dry and you never make a mistake. And all this is achieved with a pretty unique approach in terms of how calm he is, and considerate.'
undaunted when battling a world champion
Standing on the court afterward, he said with a coy smile that he wouldn’t be disclosing his tactics, because he hoped to play his elder again and again. He was that rare young player who genuinely craved more encounters with Novak Djokovic, like a sheep that had developed a taste for wolf.
/
That left Piastri in the box seat, but winning would require a flawless final few laps. Forget that there's a now three-time world champion chasing you down. You cannot make a single mistake.
Piastri, of course, didn't blink. He still had two seconds up his sleeve.
celebrations tempered with endless desire to self-evaluate and improve
And yet here was Sinner, a sedate counterexample. A new, clearer picture of the Italian began to unfurl. Someone who came late to tennis, was never cornered into it, was at little risk of burnout compared to his peers, and instead maintained a gluttonous appetite for improvement. Even with the trophy sitting in front of his face, he was talking about next steps. “It’s a great moment for me and my team,” he said. “But in the other way, we also know that we have to improve if we want to have another chance to hold a big trophy again.”
/
When later asked if he was proud of what he had achieved in 2023, Piastri said, 'It's definitely been a great season. A lot of highlights that I wouldn't have been able to achieve without the team improving the car. But also, I guess to pat myself on the back, I had to deliver in those moments, too. That's probably my proudest moment—Silverstone, where we rocked up in a car that was competitive [and] I was able to get the most out of it. Japan, not my finest race, but I did enough to score my first podium. And Qatar, we had one opportunity, really, in the whole year to actually win something, and we managed to take it. For me, I can be very proud of that.'
But it wouldn't be Piastri without he himself adding a bit of balance to the discussion. '[There were] definitely some trickier weekends,' he continued. 'And things to work on as a whole season. You don't win championships by one or two weekends. I know that from my junior career. So I just need to make that happen more often.'
//
Even as a kid he was analytical rather than starstruck: “He was never the one who was using this [practice session] to be impressed. He was always the one who was doing this to understand where I need to be in three years, in four years, in five years,” Cvjetkovic said.
/
Piastri, in his calculating, analytical style, was more worried about his own shortcomings on tyre management than the undercut.
//
How would he celebrate? Many players lose their inhibitions to joy and hurl themselves forcefully at the ground. Upon completion of this childhood dream, Sinner responsibly and gently lowered himself onto his butt, using both hands for support, and then rolled back to assume the traditional starfish of relief.
/
In typical Piastri style, there were no hysterics about his Qatar weekend as he faced the media in the post-race press conference. But he did use some strong language that suggested what it meant to him. Words like 'exceptional'. Phrases like 'close to perfect'. Fair enough, given he'd just had the sort of weekend that dreams are made of.
addicted to the grind
This evolved Sinner was one of the tour’s most balanced players, in every sense of that word: on both forehand and backhand, serve and return, defense and offense. And yet, according to a certain reductive but pervasive fan perspective, the scoreboard was clear: one major title versus two major titles. Get to work, kid.
Of course, nobody was more amenable to that imperative than Jannik himself.
/
'It's the rapidity with which he learns that I think makes him exceptional. And this has been true in whatever scale you take: within the timeframe of a race, within the timeframe of an event, within the timeframe of the season. His gradient is so impressive, which obviously creates expectation for next season. And expectations require work to be [realised]. But the good thing with Oscar is that he's such a grounded person, he's so committed.'
