To me, he showed his limited mental abilities in the RG final (up two sets to love, losing in five), then a straight-set takedown in this year’s AO final. So, 0-2 in major finals. As you put it, he doesn’t have the “it” to win these big titles.
Also, his record in finals, in general, isn’t that great: 9-17 — almost double the number of losses to wins. Again, he doesn’t have the “it” factor when it’s most needed.
It is interesting that his Elo is so poor as well. No improvement since 2019? With Rune, Alcaraz, and Sinner coming up behind him? I’d say he’s shown his best.
Yeah, I agree - or at least that is most likely. I suppose there's a scenario in which he matures mentally and addresses his issues, and then has a nice peak in his late 20s, but odds are against it.
For the sake of context, his peak Elo (2258)
is very good, just lower than Medvedev (2316) and Zverev (2303). Those two are 28th and 30th all-time, respectively, while Tsitsipas is 49th - between Roscoe Tanner and Miloslav Mecir, both of whom were very good players (Mecir is often mentioned as one of the better Slamless players, with a short but fierce peak; I see Tanner as sort of the Goran Ivanisevic of the late 70s).
Alcaraz is going to pass Tsitsipas shortly - he's at 2238 and 61st, and that's before Barcelona. He's in the 2240s now, and with a good year could end over 2300, I'd imagine. Sinner is still a ways back at 2175 and 111th, and Rune at 2098 and 198th. But they're both going to keep rising for awhile.
One more thing about Elo: it depends upon a certain degree of consistency over time, so players who are capable of brilliance over a short time but then going walkabout for awhile, like Nalbandian or Wawrinka, tend to have lower Elos than you might think, if you equate it with "peak level." Peak Elo doesn't as much equate with peak level, as in
peak consistent level. That's why someone like David Ferrer had such a high peak Elo (2348): for the year or more before that (early 2013), he was winning a lot of small tournaments and going deep in most big tournaments. After Stan's Elo peaked after winning his first Slam (2291), he was all over the place. He also won Monte Carlo, but didn't reach the SF in any other Masters, the QF in only one, and didn't get back to a Slam SF until a year later. He also didn't pile on the small titles like Ferrer did.
So it is almost like Elo represents the floor of a player's range, not the best they're capable of. Ferrer's floor was higher than Stan's at their respective bests, but obviously Stan was capable of much higher play in a given match or tournament.
