Public favorite Jannik Sinner has also won his second group match at the ATP Finals. The 22-year-old Italian beat the world number one Novak Djokovic from Serbia 7:5, 6:7 (7:5), 7:6 (7:2) in a high-class match late on Tuesday evening in Turin and thus celebrated his first victory in his fourth duel with Djokovic. Sinner only converted his second match point after 3:09 hours at midnight
This means that everything is still wide open in the group ahead of the final match day. On Thursday, Sinner and the Dane Holger Rune, who is coached by Boris Becker and benefited from Stefanos Tsitsipas’ quick withdrawal due to injury on Tuesday, will meet. The Greek player was forced to retire after just 17 minutes when he was 2:1 down due to back problems and will not be able to play his final match on Thursday.
He will be replaced by Hubert Hurkacz from Poland, who will face Djokovic but has no chance of progressing. Sinner (2:0), Rune (1:1) and Djokovic (1:1) will battle it out for a place in the semi-finals
“I’m sorry for the spectators “
Djokovic also didn’t look really fit in the highly anticipated duel with Sinner. The world number one made an unusually high number of errors and 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 also one break ahead in the third set before Djokovic countered once again. However, Sinner clinched victory in the tie-break and was celebrated by the fans afterwards
The crowd acknowledged Tsitsipas’ quick retirement with whistles. “Of course I didn’t want to win the match like that,” said Rune after the match. “But you could tell from his first service game that something wasn’t right,” said the Dane. Tsitsipas said after his retirement that he had “terrible pain” in his back. “I’m sorry for the spectators, but I just couldn’t go on,” said the Greek
