Jannik Sinner on Sunday ended a turbulent season in the best possible fashion after seeing off Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets, 7-6 (7/4), 7-5, to retain his ATP Finals title in front of delighted fans in Turin.
Italian Sinner brought the house down by winning the championship match tennis fans wanted to see, adding the prestigious year-ending tournament to the Australian Open and a landmark triumph at Wimbledon this season.
The 24-year-old also bounced back from a three-month ban which chopped out a large chunk of his season, despite the World Anti-Doping Agency accepting that the Italian was accidentally contaminated with banned substance clostebol last year.
Photo: EPA
“It has been a really long week ... it was a brilliant atmosphere here, it was almost like being at a football match,” Sinner said on court to loud cheers. “I’m really happy to have given something positive to all of you.”
Sinner has now won 31 straight matches on indoor hard courts, a run which stretches back to the 2023 championship match at Turin’s Inalpi Arena which he lost to Novak Djokovic.
Four more indoor wins would draw him level with Djokovic’s tally set between 2012 and 2015 — the second-highest in the Open era, but some way behind John McEnroe’s record of 47.
He has not dropped a set at the ATP Finals since losing that final to the Serb two years ago, and he was imperious over the week in northern Italy.
Alcaraz, unlike Sinner, now heads into the Davis Cup after a remarkable individual season in which has won eight tournaments in total and taken his Grand Slam tally to six.
Spaniard Alcaraz had the edge over Sinner over the course of the season, winning four of their six matchups, which all decided top-level tournaments, and pipping his rival to the year-end world No. 1 spot.
“I’m really, really happy with the level that I played today, with the performance,” Alcaraz said.
“I mean I just played against someone that hasn’t lost a match indoor for two years now, so that means you know how great player you are,” Alcaraz told Sinner.
While both Sinner and Alcaraz breezed into the final, the championship game was an attritional affair, with each player rock-solid on serve until an enthralling tiebreak at the end of the first set.
Sinner took the lead thanks to a brilliant lob which set up set point, and he made no mistake with a missile of a serve which Alcaraz could only limply send wide, but Sinner immediately handed Alcaraz the advantage in the second set with two double faults which helped hand his opponent a break of serve.
Sinner had not dropped a service game in the tournament up to that point, but he broke back in the sixth game to put the crowd on their feet.
Sinner collapsed to the ground in joy when Alcaraz sent a backhand wide on the first championship point, before heading into the stands to share his joy with his family amid the roars of the crowd.
A runner who stopped during a marathon in China to pose doing the splits and another who hoarded energy gels have been banned for two years, the local athletics association said yesterday. The incidents happened during Sunday’s marathon in Sichuan Province’s Chengdu and were widely shared online. Videos showed a female runner stopping suddenly and dropping to the ground in the splits position, holding up her arms in a heart shape as she apparently posed for a photograph. She “committed obstructive fouls during the race, affecting the safe participation of other runners,” the Sichuan Athletics Association said in a statement, which identified
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli yesterday vowed to “keep raising the bar” after winning the Japanese Grand Prix to become the youngest driver in Formula One history to lead the championship standings. The 19-year-old Italian took advantage of a mid-race safety car to jump into the lead after a dreadful start from pole position, crossing the line ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Antonelli’s Suzuka victory came two weeks after the first grand prix win of his career in China, and sent him top of the championship standings after three races, nine points ahead of team-mate George Russell. Mercedes are struggling to
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah on Tuesday said that he would leave the English club at the end of the Premier League season, marking an earlier-than-planned departure for one of the club’s greatest-ever scorers and soccer’s biggest names. The 33-year-old Egypt forward, who has scored 255 goals in 435 appearances for Liverpool, “reached an agreement” to quit the team a year before his contract was due to expire, the Premier League champions said. Salah’s form has dipped in his ninth year at Anfield, to such an extent that he was dropped for a stretch of games late last year — leading to the
There were some big games to be played yesterday in the NBA, with the Atlanta Hawks to play the Detroit Pistons in a matchup pitting a Hawks team who are rolling against a Pistons team trying to lock up the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. The Oklahoma City Thunder were to play the Boston Celtics, a showdown featuring the two most recent champions, while the Houston Rockets faced the Minnesota Timberwolves, a game that could factor mightily into Western Conference seeding. Elsewhere, the Washington Wizards were to play the Utah Jazz, with the Wizards on a 16-game slide visiting against a team
RSS