Instruction through video and courtrooms paid off. Italian Sinner is ranked fourth in the world, up from 15th a year ago. He has won four tournaments this year, including his first Masters 1000 win at the Canadian Open in August and two of the last four in Beijing and Vienna.
Sinner withdrew from last week’s Paris Masters after finishing his second round match at 2:37 a.m. and was scheduled to play his next match against De Minaur less than 15 hours later. He complained that tournament organizers had not given him enough time to recover, leaving his body vulnerable before the upcoming ATP finals and the Davis Cup finals, where he will compete for Italy.
Sinner qualified on his own this year after making his ATP Finals debut as a substitute in 2021. He enters as the fourth seed behind Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev, followed by Andrey Rublev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev and Holger Luhn. The tournament will be held at the Pala Alpitour in Turin, Italy, about 300 miles from Sinner’s northern Italian hometown.
Sinner has a winning record against Alcaraz, including wins at the Miami Open and China Open this year. After losing his first six matches against Medvedev this year, including the finals in Rotterdam and Miami, Sinner beat Medvedev twice last month. In the three-set Vienna final, Sinner saved two set points in the first set tiebreaker. One was an ace up the middle, and Medvedev was embarrassed by his frequent attempts at the net.
The only players Sinner didn’t beat in the final were world number one and six-time ATP Finals champion Djokovic and Rune. Sinner lost to Djokovic in the semifinals of Wimbledon this year and the quarterfinals last year. In the 2022 match, Sinner advanced to love with a two-set lead before being eliminated in the fifth set. Sinner lost to Monte Carlo this year in a match against Rune, and retired due to injury in a match against Sofia, Bulgaria in 2022.
