by Simone Rinaldi
TORINO – The ATP Finals represent a special event in tennis: in fact, it’s the place where, at the end of the year and after the four major Grand Slams (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open), the first eight players in the world, according to the ATP Rankings, face up each other in order to win the Cup, along with money and points.
This year, the defending champion is the n°2 and 2021 US Open Champion, the Russian Daniil Medvedev, who is going to partecipate at the tournament along with Novak Djokovic (1), Alexander Zverev (3), Stefanos Tsitsipas (4), Andrey Rublev (5), Matteo Berrettini (7), Casper Ruud (8) and Hubert Hurkacz (9).
The Finals start and, although everything seems to be alright, the Italian Matteo Berrettini is forced to withdraw due to an injury and he will be substitute by the emerging Italian young tennis star, Jannik Sinner, n°10 in the world and acknowledged by everybody as the future of this sport.
Sinner starts facing up the Polish Hubert Hurkacz (9), beating him in two straight sets, 6-2 6-2, in a magical night at the Pala Alpitour in Torino.
However, the Italian young star can hope for the semifinals only if Hubert Hurkacz is going to beat the German Alexander Zverev on the next day, but that is not what happened: “Sascha” Zverev beat the Polish in two sets, 6-2 6-4, and Sinner is going to face up Daniil Medvedev in a what-is-called “dead” match, because it’s irrelevant for the qualification. The semifinals are vanished.
Personally, I’m fan of both of them. I follow Jannik and Daniil since they were underdogs in this game and I saw them emerging among the other players. As a result, last night I was hyped to see the match between these two tennis stars.
The match starts and seems to point into one clear direction: Medvedev takes the first set 6-0 without particular troubles. At this point, a regular tennis player would start to hide himself from the game, after a set like that, playing safely and forcing the opponent to some errors, in order to find a way out of this nightmare. But that is not what we saw last night.
Jannik Sinner started to put such an effort to the game with serve-and-volleys, back-and-down the lines, short balls that even the n°2 in the world has seen himself to acknowledge what was and extraordinary act of courage from the younger star. The second set goes to the Italian 7(7)-6(5), forcing the defending champion to another and final set. What was a “dead” match has turned to be an epic battle between two great players.
The third set starts and the players begin to accelerate the game, forcing each other into long rallies and great shots in order to win the point. When we arrive at the score of 4-2 for the Italian, it seems to everybody that Sinner has take control of the match and he begins to see the light at the and of the tunnel, but something has changed in the air. Medvedev started to put ace after ace, hitting second serves at 200 km/h, reaching Sinner at the score of 4-4 and forcing a tie-break. At the end, it will be the Russian to win the third set 7(10)-6(8) and the match.
At the end of the day, many would say that Medvedev won and Sinner lost. But that was not what we watched last night. Daniil could simply show up and play without putting too much effort, and the same goes for Jannik. Nonetheless, the two players went into the court and played their best tennis, because the most important thing in this world is to keep fighting for what you love and to believe in yourself till the end. That is priceless.
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