Which Players Have Managed to Win a Set Against Jannik Sinner Across the Last Two Australian Opens?

When home favorite Tristan Schoolkate cracked a forehand winner to close out the first set against reigning champion Jannik Sinner in the second round of last year's Australian Open, the roar inside Rod Laver Arena felt like it could've lifted the roof clean off. It was just past 8 p.m. on a Thursday night in Melbourne, and a 23-year-old Aussie wildcard ranked No. 173 in the world had just taken a set off the defending champion. The scoreboard flashed 6-4, and for one surreal moment, upset magic hung in the air like smoke.

It didn't last. Sinner won 16 of the next 21 games, the gulf in class becoming painfully obvious as the Italian's precision overwhelmed Schoolkate's courage. The reigning champ would lose just one more set throughout the entirety of the tournament as he romped to his second straight title Down Under. Fast forward to 2026, and Sinner stands on the brink of history.

A new online betting site is just launching in time for the Australian Open. The highly anticipated Ozoon Sports will be bringing its offering to tennis aficionados in the very near future, and when the Canadian outlet opens its virtual doors, it will follow the rest of the market by installing Sinner as the odds-on favorite to claim his third straight title in Melbourne. If he lives up to the billing, he will become just the second man in the Open Era to ever complete a three-peat of Australian Open titles.

But here's the thing about Schoolkate's moment in the sun last year—that single set he claimed mattered. It put the Western Australian into the rarest company in tennis right now: players who've actually claimed a set off Jannik Sinner during his dominant run in the land down under.

Four players. Fourteen matches. Five sets dropped total across two years. But who were the players who managed to claim them? Let's take a look.

Daniil Medvedev didn't just take a set off Sinner in the 2024 final. He took two. And he was 85 minutes away from winning the whole damn thing.

The Russian came out swinging with a tactical adjustment that initially broke Sinner's rhythm completely. Instead of camping three meters behind the baseline like he normally does, Medvedev stepped up to the Italian's serve, taking the ball early and suffocating Sinner's time. He broke serve in the third game of the match—something opponents had managed just twice in Sinner's entire tournament run—and kept his foot on the gas.

Fourteen winners in the first set alone. Constant pressure. Sinner looked hesitant at the net, uncertain about his approach game. When Medvedev closed out the second set to go up two sets to love, it seemed for all the world that the Russian was on the brink of a career-defining victory.

But champions don't fold, and Sinner certainly didn't. Instead, he adjusted and started forcing Medvedev deeper and deeper behind the baseline in the fourth set, finding success with his backhand down the line. When he faced a break point serving at 3-3 in the fourth, he fired an ace. The momentum flipped. Medvedev, who'd already played nearly 21 hours of tennis across three five-setters just to reach the final, started showing cracks. Fatigue crept in. Sinner won the third, then the fourth, then rode the wave into the decider.

Final score: 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3. Three hours and 44 minutes of brilliance and heartbreak. Sinner became only the second player in the Open Era to rally from two sets down in an Australian Open final—the other being Rafael Nadal in 2022, also against Medvedev.

Heading into the 2024 semifinal, Novak Djokovic hadn't lost at the Australian Open in over five years. He was expected to breeze past the upstart Sinner before claiming a tenth title Down Under. But instead of waltzing to glory, the Serbian sensation was ransacked by his younger rival as Sinner broke Djokovic's serve five times in the opening two sets, ripping winners from every angle in the process.

Djokovic committed 54 unforced errors—an absolutely uncharacteristic performance for someone who'd won 33 straight matches at Melbourne Park. The scoreline after two sets read 6-1, 6-2, and it felt like watching the changing of the guard happen in real time. But champions don't go quietly.

Djokovic elevated his game in the third set, digging into the kind of resolve that's won him 24 Grand Slam titles. The set went to a tiebreak. Sinner had a match point at 6-5. One point from a straight-sets demolition of the greatest player of all time. Djokovic saved it. Then he saved another. He won the breaker 8-6 to finally get on the board, but it was only a brief reprieve.

Sinner broke early in the fourth set and closed out the match with a blazing forehand winner after three hours and 22 minutes. Final score: 6-1, 6-2, 6-7(6), 6-3. Djokovic had finally been beaten in Australia, and that single set he took? It represented defiance more than dominance.

Holger Rune's fourth-round clash against Sinner last year featured a 21-minute delay when the net broke, medical timeouts for both players, and conditions so brutal that rallies left them gasping. The Italian took the first set easily, 6-3, but then something shifted. The defending champion looked off, his movement compromised.

He took a medical timeout off-court, and when play resumed, Rune pounced. The Dane earned his first break point when Sinner double-faulted to trail 5-3 in the second. Rune leveled the match before Sinner's conditioning and shotmaking reasserted control for a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory. Rune didn't outplay Sinner so much as he capitalized on a rare moment when the Italian looked vulnerable. That's all you get against the world No. 1—a window, not a door.

And then there's Schoolkate, the ultimate underdog story. The Perth native had failed to qualify for the Australian Open for five straight years before finally earning a wildcard. He walked onto Rod Laver Arena for his center court debut against the defending champion with nothing to lose and everything to prove. He played smart, aggressive tennis—moving forward constantly to avoid baseline wars with Sinner, winning 94% of his net points in the opening set. When he broke Sinner to love to close out the set 6-4, nearly 15,000 fans exploded. It ended Sinner's streak of 29 consecutive sets won.

The Australian couldn't sustain it. Sinner broke back to lead 4-3 in the second set, and the difference in class became glaring. But the Aussie shouldn't be too disheartened. Plenty that came before him were embarrassed by Sinner, and plenty more will be in 2026.