Sinner beats Norrie to reach Madrid quarter-finals, extends winning streak to 25

Jannik Sinner kept turning the ATP Masters 1000 circuit into a one-man chase on Tuesday, beating Cameron Norrie 6-2, 7-5 to reach the Madrid Open quarter-finals and extend his winning streak at the level to 25 matches.

The world number one needed 1 hour and 27 minutes at Manolo Santana Stadium to dismiss Norrie in their first career meeting. The straight-sets victory kept alive Sinner’s bid to become the first player in history to win five consecutive ATP Masters 1000 titles, a mark that would push his current run beyond the four-title streaks previously achieved by Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal.

Sinner’s form has been relentless since early March. He has already collected Masters 1000 titles in Indian Wells, Miami and Monte-Carlo this season, and Monte-Carlo was his first triumph on clay at that level. The Madrid result added another layer to a season that has already established him as the player setting the standard across surfaces, rather than simply in isolated bursts.

Madrid has not always been his easiest stop. Before this tournament, Sinner held a 6-2 record in the Spanish capital, with his best previous finish coming in 2024, when he reached the quarter-finals before withdrawing ahead of his last-eight match against Felix Auger-Aliassime because of a hip injury. This year, entering Madrid as world number one for the first time at an event in 2026, he moved cleanly through another barrier and into the last eight without dropping a set against Norrie.

The larger question around Sinner’s run is no longer whether he is in form, but whether men’s tennis is drifting into an era of single-player dominance at the top end of the Masters and, by extension, the majors. Eight ATP Masters 1000 titles already sit on his resume, and the 25-match streak is now the fourth-longest in series history since 1990. The numbers suggest a player who is not just winning, but pulling the field into his wake.

Norrie, meanwhile, saw a strong clay-court swing come to an end. He had reached the Barcelona quarter-finals last week and the Madrid fourth round, and he remained on course to move back toward the ATP top 20 in the live rankings after the match. British tennis officials had also tracked him as a player close to returning to the top 20 for the first time since February 2024. Against Sinner, though, the climb stopped short, and the standard at the top looked higher still.