The tennis tournament that features the most matches between the world’s best closes the season again: the ATP Finals They are played in Turin, Italy from Sunday 12th November to Sunday 19th November.
novak djokovicthe leader of this year’s rankings, will go to Italy to ensure that he is the best tennis player of the year (he does not need to win another match) and achieve what no one else in history has been able to: seven ATP Finals titles.
Carlos Alcarazthe Wimbledon champion, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Holger Rune, Daniil Medvedev, Alexander Zverev, Andrey Rublev and the place Jannik Sinner They will try to dethrone Djokovic, but it won’t be easy at all.
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Favorites to win ATP Finals 2023: Why Novak Djokovic leads the predictions?
Djokovic is estimated to have around a 40% chance of winning the title at the 2023 ATP Finals, and the Serb’s favoritism is based on his past at this tournament and on the surface, as well as his current situation.
Djokovic arrives in Turin after winning the Paris Masters 1000, the European Tour’s most important year-end tournament before the ATP Finals, also played indoors and on hard surfaces. The Serb has won the last 18 matches he has played and since the end of May has won 31 of the 32 matches he has played: his only loss was in the Wimbledon final to Carlos Alcaraz, in five sets.
In the Finals, Djokovic was crowned in 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2022 and lost only two of the eight finals he played in. In 15 appearances, he has a record of 46-17 and has been eliminated in the group stage only four times (2007, 2009, 2011 and 2019), three of them sharing a group with Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer.
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Nole lost just one match on hard court in all of 2023 (the Dubai semi-final against Daniil Medvedev in February) and over the past two years has just five losses on hard court against 61 wins.
Against Sinner, Djokovic has a 3-0 record in his favor, against Medvedev he leads 10-5, against Alcaraz he is tied 2-2 but is 2-1 this year and has won the only match played on hard court. against Tsitsipas he wins 11-2, with Rooney he is tied 2-2 but he won the last match a few days ago, against Rublev he leads 5-1 and against Zverev he leads 8-4. Of all of them, only Alcaraz, Rune and Medvedev have been able to beat him in the last 18 months.
Moreover, the remaining members of this tournament arrive in Turin with great irregularity: at the M1000 in Paris, the runner-up was Grigor Dimitrov, and only Tsitsipas (lost to Dimitrov), Rooney (fell to Djokovic) and Rublev (eliminated by Djokovic ) They managed to reach the quarterfinals. Alcaraz was knocked out straight by Roman Shafiulin on his debut, as was Medvedev against Dimitrov.
In the previous M1000, in Shanghai, in which Djokovic did not compete, the only one among the eight was Rublev (he lost the final in a tiebreak to Hubert Hurkas, who will be in Turin as a replacement). And since August, the only participants in the ATP Finals who have won a tournament besides Djokovic are Sinner (Masters 1000 in Toronto and ATP 500 in Beijing and Vienna) and Zverev (ATP 250 in Chengdu).
Sinner’s good form, his indoor game and his home base in Italy make the Italian debutant a surprise this year, but it seems very difficult to think that he will dethrone Djokovic in a possible final (they will clash in the group stage, so no may meet in the semi-final).
