Or maybe Jannik Sinner just likes playing against Casper Ruud. Whatever it was, the top-ranked Sinner cranked up his level to near perfection at times in a 6-0, 6-1 dismantling of Ruud in the Italian Open quarterfinals — after Sinner was granted an audience with the new tennis-playing pope just down the road at the Vatican.

World number one Jannik Sinner has met Pope Leo XIV in Rome. The 23-year-old, who has reached the quarter-finals of the Italian Open in his first tournament since serving a three-month doping ban, was invited by the Vatican to meet the newly elected leader of the Catholic Church.