(Football news) The current champion destroyed Holger Rune in a thrilling three-set match on Sunday, then Sinner thrilled the Turin fans by defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas in just two sets.
Finishing the 2023 season on his rightful throne at the top of the rankings was the overriding goal for the respected Serbian, even though a seventh ATP Finals title would not go amiss for Djokovic, who would surpass fellow six-time winner Roger Federer to create a category of his own with success in Italy.
The 24-time Grand Slam champion only needed to win one match to secure another year at the top, though he had to work extremely hard to defeat Rune. Djokovic just needed to avoid losing all of his matches to deny Carlos Alcaraz the top spot, who in turn had to win the tournament without losing.
Less than a week had passed since he beat the Dane at the Paris Masters, avenging his 2022 final defeat at the hands of an underage Rune. Djokovic overcame a disastrous second-set tiebreaker to win 7-6[4] 6-7[1] 6-3 in an exciting three-hour match, capping it off in style with a 39th winner for a final love hold.
The 36-year-old has stated that an unprecedented seventh year-end title would be a mere “bonus” alongside his number one ranking. He is now 40-3 at the ATP Finals after winning the opening set. Thanks to his hard-fought victory, which saw him make just nine errors and hit ten aces, he is comfortably sitting in second place in the Green group.
Since winning the opening set at the championships, Djokovic has not lost a round-robin match to Dominic Thiem in 2019. He has won ten such matches since then. If that wasn’t enough, the Serbian is now one match away from winning 15 top-10 matches in 2023, which would see him set an all-time calendar-year record for players 35 and over.
Rune was the only player to keep Djokovic on the court for more than three hours during an ATP Finals match, having done so only once before with Daniil Medvedev last year. However, the Turin supporters won’t mind another late night if their hero Sinner can play for more than 180 minutes in Tuesday’s crucial match.
As a direct qualifier, Sinner set the stage for his proper ATP Finals baptism two years after making his year-end event debut, defeating 2019 winner Tsitsipas 6-4 6-4 to take the lead in the Green group standings right away. Sinner had previously played as an alternate to Matteo Berrettini.
Also read:Alexander Zverev defeats Carlos Alcaraz in ATP Finals
