PAudience favorite Jannik Sinner also won his second group game at the ATP Finals. The 22-year-old Italian prevailed late on Tuesday evening in Turin against world number one Novak Djokovic from Serbia in a high-class game 7:5, 6:7 (7:5), 7:6 (7:2) and was celebrated thus his first victory in the fourth duel with Djokovic. Sinner only converted his second match point after midnight after 3:09 hours.
This means that everything is still open in the group before the last match day. On Thursday, Sinner and the Dane Holger Rune, trained by Boris Becker, will meet, who benefited from the rapid retirement of Stefanos Tsitsipas due to injury on Tuesday. From his point of view, the Greek had to give up after just 17 minutes due to back problems when the score was 1:2 and he will no longer be able to play in his last match on Thursday.
Djokovic: “He was braver and more consistent”
He will be replaced by the Pole Hubert Hurkacz, who will meet Djokovic on Thursday (2.30 p.m./Sky), but has no chance of progressing. Sinner (2:0), Rune (1:1) and Djokovic (1:1) are fighting for a place in the semi-finals.
Djokovic also didn’t seem really fit in the highly anticipated duel with Sinner. The world number one made an unusually large number of mistakes, and he also had to have his neck treated in the second set. Sinner, on the other hand, worked himself into a bit of a frenzy at times, but missed an earlier decision in the second set. He was already one break ahead in the third set before Djokovic countered again. In the tiebreak, Sinner completed the victory and was then cheered on by the fans.
He then described the success as one of the greatest of his tennis career to date. “This victory is definitely one of my top victories,” said the 22-year-old, who also expressed great praise for the audience: “There is no better place to beat the number one in the world. Thanks to the audience, we won this thing together.”
For Djokovic it was the first defeat since losing the Wimbledon final against the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz in mid-July. He then won 17 games in a row on the ATP tour and, among other things, won the title at the US Open in New York. The 36-year-old proved to be a fair loser. “Jannik deserved to win today. “He simply played braver and more consistently than me in the crucial moments,” said Djokovic.
The spectators had previously acknowledged Tsitsipas’ quick surrender with whistles. “Of course I didn’t want to win the game that way,” said Rune after the game. “But you noticed from your first serve game that something was wrong,” said the Dane. After giving up, Tsitsipas said he had “terrible pain” in his back. “I’m sorry for the spectators, but it just didn’t work anymore,” said the Greek.
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