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The Other Court

Jannik Sinner x Former Tennis Player!Reader

Summary: After a brutal injury ends reader's meteoric rise, she disappears from the sport. Until Jannik Sinner finds her years later in Rome, coaching a wildcard on the very courts that should've been hers. She's not the girl he used to chase, and he's not the boy she used to beat.

a/n: this is in jannik's pov

When they were fifteen, she always beat him to the court.

Morning sessions started at seven, but she’d already be through her first basket of serves by the time Jannik arrived, bag slung over one shoulder, curls still damp from a half-awake shower. She never looked up. Just tossed another ball in the air, fluid and easy, the lefty toss not quite textbook but undeniably hers. He recognized it in his sleep, that uncoiled whip of a swing, the sound it made when she timed it right: low, clean, final.

She was faster than him. Lighter on her feet. Her footwork was tighter, her hands quieter, her temper non-existent. Even when her backhand clipped the net cord and dropped out during match play, she never snapped a string or muttered under her breath. Just shook it off and walked to the other side like it didn’t bother her at all. It drove him crazy in the way that admiration sometimes does.

They trained together every summer at the academy in Bordighera, back when they were still juniors with secondhand rackets and parents who clapped a little too loudly. At first, she barely spoke to him. She was focused. The kind of focused that got under his skin, because it made him feel like he was still a kid playing catch-up. She hit with the older boys. Ran extra laps. Practiced double-handed on both sides, just in case she ever needed it.

"You're not trying to be good," Jannik told her once, wiping sweat off his chin during a break. "You're trying to be perfect."

She took a sip from her water bottle, eyes still on the court. "Trying to win."

And he remembered that. He remembered everything, actually. The way her braids would come loose halfway through drills, the neon pink tape on her wrist, the callus on her index finger from stringing her own rackets at the academy’s shed. She liked black strings and hated indoor courts. Said they made her feel like the air was too still. Trapped.

The first time they played a proper match, she double bageled him.

He was furious, but Jannik couldn't help it but to also admire her play. She was gracious as ever, light on her feet, the way she just floats across the court.

"You played well," she told him at the net, offering her hand, and he wanted to believe it wasn’t pity. Wanted to believe she meant it.

They weren’t friends exactly. But they were something. Rivals, maybe. Mirrors, sometimes. But Jannik couldn't help himself, he felt as if there was something threatening to bloom. And maybe she felt it too. He rose fast, but she rose faster. By seventeen, she had her name stitched on a Nike visor and a junior Grand Slam final under her belt. Reporters circled her like hawks. People talked about her with a kind of breathless expectation. "The next big thing", they said, like she wasn’t still a teenager trying to stay upright under the weight and pressure of it all.

And then came Roland Garros Juniors.

It was supposed to be her title. She’d made the semis look routine, dismantling the third seed in fifty-eight minutes on Court 7. Jannik watched from the top row, elbows on his knees, barely breathing when she hit a running forehand up the line that spun so hard it dropped on the baseline and skipped into the fence.

He never told her he watched. He never told her he skipped his own recovery session just to see her play.

The final was scheduled on Court Suzanne-Lenglen. It was hot that afternoon, the kind of Parisian heat that made the clay smoke beneath your soles. She started strong, holding serve at love. Jannik was in the stands again, this time in a proper seat, credentials hanging around his neck. He could see her clearly from the third row. The thin line between her brows as she bounced the ball, the way she reset after each point like she was erasing the last one.

In the second game of the second set, it happened.

She slid for a wide ball, that same smooth left-foot plant she’d done a thousand times before. But something went wrong. Her shoe caught. Her knee twisted. Her racket dropped to the ground a full second before the scream came.

It was sharp. Real.

Jannik stood before he realized it.

Trainers rushed in. The match was paused. She didn’t get up.

He watched her hold her leg like it might come apart in her hands. Watched the other girl cross the net hesitantly, not sure if she should celebrate or apologize. He watched her get stretchered off the court, face blank, mouth pressed shut like she was refusing to cry until the tunnel swallowed her whole.

And just like that, the golden girl disappeared.

There were whispers after. Surgeries, rehab. A press release about a "complicated tear." She withdrew from Wimbledon juniors. Then the US Open. Then silence. Her social media went dark. Her name stopped showing up in draw sheets.

The world moved on.

But Jannik didn’t. Not really.

Not when he won his first ATP title. Not when he cracked the Top 10. Not even when he stood on the Centre Court of a Slam final and someone in the front row wore a visor just like hers. Not even when held the World No. 1 title.

He still remembered the way she moved, the sound of her serve, the way she told him trying wasn’t enough.

He still remembered her, she haunted him. Always wondering she could be, if he would run into her during tournaments.

And then, years later, in Rome, she came back.

But not to play.

——

The clay was different in Rome. Deeper. More theatrical. Everything at the Foro Italico felt like it was made to be watched. The marble statues, the sunlit courts, the piazza where the press circled like bees. Jannik didn’t love the noise, but he’d learned how to move through it. Smile here. Interview there. Keep the routine intact.

It was just past four when he cut through the practice courts after media rounds, intending to duck back into the locker room. He kept his head down. Headphones in. Until something stopped him.

Not a sound. A posture.

He looked up. Court 5.

A junior wildcard was practicing, kid from Naples with a sharp slice and nerves too big for his frame. But Jannik’s eyes weren’t on the boy.

She was standing behind the baseline, sunglasses perched on her head, arms crossed, lips pressed together in the way she always did when she was watching. Really watching. Not just looking for errors, but timing. Effort. How much a player wanted it.

The same way she'd once looked at him.

She hadn't changed much. Older, maybe. Stronger in the shoulders. Her hair was different, tied back in a low knot, but the way she moved; that hadn’t changed. She stepped forward during a drill and mimed a motion to the kid, hips rotating, weight shifting, like she was still teaching her own body what to remember.

Jannik’s heart dropped somewhere low in his chest.

He waited until the rally ended before he called her name.

She turned before he finished saying it, and she smiles.

For a second, neither of them said anything.

“Hey,” she greets, in that soft, wry tone that hadn’t aged a day, God, Jannik could fall apart at the sound of her voice. “Didn’t expect to see you lurking around the junior courts.” she smirks, a hand on her hips.

“You never know where the real matches are,” he said, slow smile pulling at the edge of his mouth.

She laughed, quiet but genuine. “Still with the one-liners, eh?.”

“Still trying to impress you, is it working now?” he said before he could help it.

She raised an eyebrow, just stared whilst quirking a playful smile. “You used to do it by overhitting forehands. Am I right or wrong?”

“And you used to do it by destroying my serve.”

“I was fair,” she said. “Just better.”

He smiled again. Because it was true, and because it was good to hear her say it like she used to.

“How long have you been coaching?” He asks, trying to keep up the momentum of their conversation.

“Just started with him a few months ago.” She nodded toward the boy, who was now sipping from a bottle and wiping sweat off his chin like a pro. “He reminds me of you.” She looks at him with a look that Jannik couldn't quite read. Was it longing? Or something else? Jannik couldn't decipher.

“Red hair and sickly looking skin?” he offered.

“No,” she shook her head, laughing. “The way he hates to lose. And you never used to admit it, but it showed. Always trying to hit your way out of frustration. No one could tell you were frustrated, but I dd.”

He tilted his head, a small grin. “You used to smile when I did.”

“You were predictable,” she breathes out. “But not boring.”

There was a pause.

He looked at her again. Not past her. At her. At the hint of sunscreen on her nose, the fray of her old academy cap, the careful way she stood, like she still carried her injury in her bones, even if it didn’t show anymore.

“You ever think about playing again?” he asked.

She shook her head once, not unkindly. “Sometimes. When I’m stringing rackets. Or watching a late match. But I don’t miss the tour.”

“You miss competing,” he said.

She didn’t deny it.

He took a step closer to the fence, fingers curling around the wire like it might keep the moment still.

“I watched your Roland Garros final,” he said.

“I know,” she said, just above a whisper.

He blinked. “How?”

“You always sat in the third row,” she said, turning toward him. “Back then, at least.”

He let that settle. Let the honesty of it rise between them.

“Come watch my match tomorrow,” he said.

She smiled, then shook her head. “You’re not a junior anymore, Jannik. You don’t need me in your corner.”