Audience favorite Jannik Sinner also won his second group game at the ATP Finals. The 22-year-old Italian defeated world number one Novak Djokovic from Serbia in a high-class game late on Tuesday evening in Turin with 7:5, 6:7 (7:5), 7:6 (7:2) and 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.
He will be replaced by Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz, who will face Djokovic 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.
“I’m sorry for the viewers”
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, played 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 secured the victory and was then celebrated by the fans.
The spectators acknowledged Tsitsipas’ quick submission 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.
