Jannik Sinner swept past Alexei Popyrin 6-2, 6-0 at the Italian Open on Monday, stretching his winning run in Masters 1000 events to 30 straight matches and moving a step closer to one of tennis’ rarest prizes.
The Italian advanced to the round of 16 at atp rome and will face fellow countryman Andrea Pellegrino, who earned his place by outlasting 20th seed Frances Tiafoe. Sinner has now won all five of the last ATP 1000 Masters events and has not lost a match since the Shanghai Masters in October, a sequence that leaves him within reach of the career Golden Masters — the feat of winning every ATP Masters 1000 tournament. Only Novak Djokovic has completed it. The Italian Open remains the only ATP1000 event missing from Sinner’s collection, and last month he beat Alexander Zverev in the Madrid Open final as his run kept building.
For Sinner, the path now runs through Pellegrino and then, if he keeps winning, the deeper rounds in Rome, where the pressure only grows with every match. For now, the larger picture is simple: he is playing like a man who has made every Masters stop except one his territory, and the tournament in his home country is the final lock still waiting to be opened.
Iga Swiatek also moved through on Monday, beating Naomi Osaka 6-2, 6-1 in one hour and 22 minutes to book her place in the quarter-finals. The four-time champion in Rome, who also won the event in 2020, 2021 and 2024, will next face fifth seed Jessica Pegula. Swiatek had not won on clay since her French Open triumph in 2024 before this tournament, and she had not advanced past the quarter-finals at a tournament this year, which makes the next match a sharper test than the scoreline against Osaka suggests.
That is the tension now in Rome: Sinner is chasing history on the men’s side, while Swiatek is trying to turn one dominant win into a deeper run that has eluded her for months. The tournament has moved into the stage where the favorite no longer only has to win — he or she has to keep proving the level is real.
In another match that shapes the men’s draw, Karen Khachanov faces Dino Prizmic in the round of 16.
