World number one Carlos Alcaraz, 19, pulls out of the ATP Finals and Davis Cup Finals due to a stomach muscle injury suffered in the Paris Masters quarter-finals.
Carlos Alcaraz on Saturday withdrew from the Nitto ATP Finals and the Davis Cup Finals because of an internal oblique muscle tear in his left abdominal wall, ending his season.
“After my withdrawal yesterday and having been evaluated by my medical team, @drlopezmartinez and @JuanjoMoreno_M, unfortunately this is the result of my injury: an internal oblique muscle tear in the left abdominal wall with an estimated recovery time of six weeks,” Alcaraz tweeted. “Unfortunately I won’t make the ATP Finals or the Davis Cup Finals. It is tough and painful for me to miss these two events, which are so important to me, but all I can do is be positive and focus on my recovery. Thank you for the support! 😘”
After my withdrawal yesterday and having been evaluated by my medical team, @drlopezmartinez and @JuanjoMoreno_M, unfortunately this is the result of my injury: an internal oblique muscle tear in the left abdominal wall with an estimated recovery time of six weeks. pic.twitter.com/MbVHhJF1Oe
— Carlos Alcaraz (@carlosalcaraz) November 5, 2022
Alcaraz completes his season with a 57-13 record. On 12 September he became the youngest World No. 1 in the history of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.
The 19-year-old won five tour-level titles in 2022, including his first two ATP Masters 1000 victories (Miami and Madrid) and his first Grand Slam trophy at the US Open.
Despite his withdrawal, Alcaraz is still in position to finish year-end World No. 1. He leads Rafael Nadal by 1,000 points and Stefanos Tsitsipas by 1,470 points in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings.
The Spaniard will be replaced in the Nitto ATP Finals field by Taylor Fritz. The American enjoyed a breakout 2022 season, including a run to his first Masters 1000 title in Indian Wells.
#NextGenATP Briton Jack Draper entered the 2022 season at No. 265 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings with just two tour-level wins to his name.
Fast forward 11 months and the 20-year-old arrives at the Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan as the World No. 45, holding a 17-11 tour-level record on the season. Having struggled with injuries in previous years, Draper feels that his ability to stay fit in 2022 has been paramount to his rise.
“It has been the first season I have been able to play lots,” Draper told ATPTour.com. “With my injuries in the past few years I have not been able to play as much as I would have wanted to, because of some unfortunate injuries. For example, I did some ligaments in my ankle. Just not getting that consistency of practising and competing. I think that is the biggest thing this year, just being able to stay fit and healthy and stay on court. I am ready physically and mentally to put it on court together.”
Draper, who missed the second half of 2021 due to a ruptured ligament in his ankle, started the season on fire, winning four ATP Challenger Tour titles in the opening four months of the year.
The Briton holds a 24-4 record on the Challenger Tour in 2022 and feels the experiences he has gained at that level have been crucial in his development.
“I think the Challenger Tour is massive for players,” Draper said. “When you come through and start winning tournaments back-to-back at that level it gives you huge confidence you can come on Tour and compete with these guys. Everyone on the Challenger level is hungry to do well because that is what gets you onto the Tour. The Challenger Tour has given me a real base and confidence of coming onto the Tour. It gives you a great platform.”
After a strong opening to the year, Draper, who supports Manchester United Football Club and enjoys listening to rap and grime music, started to gain entry into tour-level events where he quickly made his mark.
The lefty won main draw matches at ATP Masters 1000 events in Miami and Madrid and then soared to his first tour-level semi-final on home soil in Eastbourne. Draper made his biggest splash in North America, though, where he earned his first Top 10 win against Stefanos Tsitsipas en route to the quarter-finals in Montreal before he upset Felix Auger-Aliassime at the US Open.
For Draper, his run to the third round in New York stands out as a highlight.
“I think the most satisfying run was [at] the US Open,” Draper said. “I feel I beat two players in [Emil] Ruusuvuori and Auger-Aliassime who are top players and people I have been watching the past couple of years. The win against Auger-Aliassime gave me confidence that I can play well and really compete with these guys. The Tsitsipas win as well in Montreal. Playing those top players and getting wins and feeling comfortable is crucial.”
Possessing a big forehand, fearsome serve and rock-solid backhand, Draper is now ready to bring his best level to Milan. He will make his debut at the 21-and-under event, to be held from 8-12 November.
“It was a goal [to qualify] from the start of the year,” Draper said. “I have watched the event over the past couple of years and it looks like a very exciting event with lots of great players and young players coming through. I tried not to pay too much attention to qualifying as I know there are so many young players doing great things as well, but I suppose I put in the work and I kept on banking good weeks.
“I think it will be special to be a part of. You don’t get to play many tournaments where there are just eight players competing. They are all guys who are coming onto the scene and are exciting prospects. I think that is the real exciting thing, that you are playing guys who are a similar age and playing great tennis as well and have been consistent throughout the year.”
Draper will be joined at the Allianz Cloud by seven fellow #NextGenATP stars, including Lorenzo Musetti, Holger Rune and Brandon Nakashima. The Briton revealed that he is excited to test his mettle against the trio in Milan as he looks to build long-running rivalries with them.
“Seeing the likes of Musetti, Rune and Nakashima who have had great years. They are probably the guys I am most excited to play,” Draper admitted. “I feel like they have always been really good players and I have grown up in that age gap. Musetti I have always been around at the junior tournaments and it has been good to see him have a bit of a breakthrough year this year.”
Holger Rune took his stellar late-season form to another level on Saturday at the Rolex Paris Masters, where the #NextGenATP Dane dispatched Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-4, 6-2 to reach his maiden ATP Masters 1000 final.
Rune took control early in a meeting between two of the in-form players on the ATP Tour, using his aggressive groundstrokes to dictate play wherever possible and heap pressure on the Auger-Aliassime serve. Both players were competing for a spot in their fourth consecutive ATP Tour final, but the 19-year-old Rune converted three of eight break points to wrap a comprehensive 88-minute win.
It was the second meeting between Rune and Auger-Aliassime in the space of six days, following the latter’s straight-sets triumph in the Basel final on Sunday. Yet the Canadian could not match Rune’s intensity or quality in Paris as the Dane convincingly halted Auger-Aliassime’s winning streak at 16 matches.
Fourth final in a row. Fourth top-10 win in a row 🤯@holgerrune2003 snaps Auger-Aliassime’s SIXTEEN-match winning streak to reach his maiden Masters 1000 final in Paris!#RolexParisMasters pic.twitter.com/gcfq107ye9
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) November 5, 2022
Rune had been unable to break the Auger-Aliassime serve across two tight sets in Basel but he was able to forge a breakthrough in just the third game of the match this time around. A combination of some smart returning and Auger-Aliassime netting a straightforward forehand drive volley on break point gave the Dane a 2-1 lead, and he held on comfortably to claim a set in which he made 89 per cent (24/27) of first serves.
Despite some flashes of brilliance, Auger-Aliassime struggled to match the level he had shown throughout his remarkable winning streak. The Florence, Antwerp and Basel champion could find no way to regularly counter Rune’s forays to the net, and the Dane raced to a 4-0 lead in the second set en route to completing his 18th tour-level win in 20 matches.
Having moved past Hubert Hurkacz, Andrey Rublev, Carlos Alcaraz and Auger-Aliassime in his past four matches in Paris, Rune will now aim for five Top 10 victories in as many days in Sunday’s championship match. His opponent there will be six-time Paris champion Novak Djokovic or Stefanos Tsitsipas.
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The groups for the 2022 Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals were set Saturday in Milan.
Italian Lorenzo Musetti is making his second appearance at the 21-and-under event and will lead Red Group alongside Jack Draper, Chun-Hsin Tseng and Dominic Stricker.
Dane Holger Rune arrives in Italy off the back of a standout season, having won two tour-level titles. The 19-year-old will compete in Green Group with Brandon Nakashima, Jiri Lehecka and Francesco Passaro.
Green Group
Red Group
Musetti will lead home hopes in Milan at the fifth edition of the event. The 20-year-old lifted his maiden ATP Tour trophy in Hamburg in July before he soared to success on home soil in Naples.
The Italian will look to follow in the footsteps of previous Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals champions Hyeon Chung, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.
Top seed Rune, who made his debut in Milan last year, is in red-hot form, having won 18 of his past 20 matches. The 19-year-old captured the crown in Stockholm last month and is still alive at the ATP Masters 1000 event in Paris, where he will compete in the semi-finals on Saturday.
Nakashima trained in Milan on Saturday as he prepares to compete in the tournament for the second straight year. The 21-year-old American clinched his maiden tour-level title in San Diego and reached the fourth round at Wimbledon.
Draper will try to make a deep run on his debut in Milan. The 20-year-old Briton started the season No. 265 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, but has climbed to a current career-high No. 45. He defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas en route to the quarter-finals at an ATP Masters 1000 event in Montreal and then defeated Felix Auger-Aliassime at the US Open.
Seven different countries are represented in the eight-man singles field, with the event to be held at the Allianz Cloud in Milan, from 9-13 November.
Stefanos Tsitsipas won two of his first three ATP Head2Head matchups against Novak Djokovic, but the Serbian has owned their rivalry since then, winning seven straight matches. Djokovic will now put that streak — and two others — on the line when he meets the Greek in Saturday’s Rolex Paris Masters semi-finals.
Djokovic is the underdog by seeding in Bercy, but not by form. The sixth seed carries dual 12-match win streaks into the semis, both overall and at the ATP Masters 1000 event, where he has won titles in his past two appearances in 2019 and 2021. He has not dropped a set this week, cruising past Maxime Cressy, Karen Khachanov and Lorenzo Musetti as he looks to win his third straight ATP Tour trophy after triumphs in Tel Aviv and Astana.
“No one is unbeatable, but I’ve had plenty of success on this court and I think every single year that I come back, the confidence level is higher,” the six-time champion said after reaching his eighth semi-final at the event. “I just like the conditions, even though they are different from last year. I think I adjusted very well. Right from the start I was really playing my best tennis in the first match and I continued doing that. Hopefully I will not derail myself and will keep going in the same direction.”
Djokovic was particulaly dominant off his forehand wing against Musetti, firing eight winners in a 6-0, 6-3 victory. He received a forehand Shot Quality grade of 9.2 out of 10 for the match. (Learn more about Shot Quality.)
Tsitsipas also brings a perfect 6-0 set record into the semis following wins against Daniel Evans, Corentin Moutet and Tommy Paul. The fifth seed is seeking his third final in four events after reaching the title matches in Astana and Stockholm. He dropped a 6-3, 6-4 decision to Djokovic in the Astana final and has not beaten the Serbian since 2019.
Asked how he would snap his losing streak against the Serbian, Tsitsipas said that he would fight the urge to overplay against the man who spent a record 373 weeks as World No. 1 during his career.
“I need to show the same consistency,” he said. “I have weapons that I can use. But in the past I feel I have used too much spin or power. It’s important that I stay at a medium level and not overdo it. It will be a physical match and I will need to move well.”
The 24-year-old, who leads the ATP Tour with 60 wins this season, has an outside chance to finish 2022 atop the Pepperstone ATP Rankings. He has moved up two places to No. 3 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings this week, and now sits fewer than 1,500 points behind World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz. He could move within 830 points of the Spaniard by winning his third tour-level title of the year in Paris, with an additional 1,500 points on offer in Turin for an undefeated champion.
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Saturday’s second semi-final is a rematch of last week’s Basel final between Felix Auger-Aliassime and Holger Rune. Like Djokovic, the Canadian also brings an impressive streak into the weekend: He has won 16 straight matches with titles in Florence, Antwerp and Basel.
Rune has also been in blistering form of late, with Auger-Aliassime the only man who can better his 17-2 indoor record over the past two months. The Stockholm champion’s only losses in that stretch came against Marc-Andrea Huesler in the Sofia final and against Auger-Aliassime in Basel.
“I lost to him last week, but hopefully tomorrow is going to be different,” the #NextGenATP Dane said, looking ahead to the pair’s second meeting. “I know what happened last week and I can take a lot away from that and do a lot different tomorrow. I’m super pumped and super excited for what’s going to happen.”
Auger-Aliassime is through to his second ATP Masters 1000 semi-final, three years after his initial breakthrough in Miami in 2019.
“It’s crazy, because I remember like yesterday making my first semi-final in Miami,” said the Canadian. “It was so unexpected, and I thought at the time it was fine, making a semi-final in a Masters, [and that I] would do it many times in the future.
“Then it took three years for me to get back there and it just proves how tough it is at this level to reach the semi-finals or better at these events. So I’m really happy that I was able to do it.”
Set to make his debut at the Nitto ATP Finals, which begins 13 November, Auger-Aliassime has a chance to better Rafael Nadal’s season-high win streak of 20 matches before the year is up.
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Stefanos Tsitsipas has set up a blockbuster semi-final showdown with Novak Djokovic in Paris after dismissing American Tommy Paul Friday night to capture his 60th match win of the year.
The fifth-seeded Greek, who still has an outside shot at finishing the year No. 1 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, saved all seven break points he faced in the 6-2, 6-4 win while converting all three break opportunities that came his way.
“It was a very good match,” Tsitsipas said. “I was able to get ahead in some of his service games, which gave me good energy. I wish I could have avoided some of the situations where I had to save break points, but I dealt with those situations very professionally and I was able to hold serve. My forehand is my confidence shot and has allowed me to get into the corners to open up the court. It’s a weapon of mine on these courts.”
The 2021 and ’22 Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters champion is attempting to win multiple ATP Masters 1000 titles in the same season for the first time, but that road runs through Djokovic. The Serbian owns a record 38 titles at this level, and has triumphed in Paris a record six times, including in his two most recent appearances in 2019 and 2021. Djokovic has also beaten Tsitsipas seven straight times and boasts an overall 8-2 lead in their ATP Head2Head series.
Asked how he would snap his losing streak to Djokovic, Tsitsipas said that he would fight the urge to overplay against the man who spent a record 373 weeks as World No. 1 during his career. “I need to show the same consistency. I have weapons that I can use. But in the past I feel I have used too much spin or power. It’s important that I stay at a medium level and not overdo it. It will be a physical match and I will need to move well.”
Tsitsipas, who won the Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals in 2018 and the Nitto ATP Finals in 2019, has claimed 50 match wins in a season in three of the past four years. He will be returning to Turin again this year for the season finale from 13-20 November.
#NextGenATP Italian Jannik Sinner broke new ground in 2019 when he triumphed on home soil at the Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan.
The then-18-year-old, who sat No. 95 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, defeated Alex de Minaur in the championship match to give Italy its first home champion at the 21-and-under event.
Next week, Francesco Passaro will aim to replicate his countryman and soar to success on debut at the Allianz Cloud, with Sinner’s victory providing him with belief and motivation.
“I watched on TV last year and three years ago when Jannik won,” Passaro told ATPTour.com. “I think for me the event is a big opportunity because it is in Italy and it is going be of the best under-21 players in the world. It is a very big goal. This year I have grown up a lot. I am now more about myself. The Italian crowd. The energy of the stadium and the atmosphere is [going to be] very, very nice.”
In 2019, Passaro was ranked outside the Top 1000 and was aiming to make his first moves in the sport. The 21-year-old, who describes himself as mentally strong on court with a powerful serve and forehand, has climbed quickly since and as of today is one of 10 Italians inside the Top 200 aged 21 or under.
Passaro will be joined in Milan by Lorenzo Musetti, who has captured two tour-level titles in a standout season. With countrymen Matteo Arnaldi and Luca Nardi only narrowly missing out on qualification, the depth of the men’s game in Italy has never been stronger.
Passaro feels that the relationships he has forged with his fellow Italians and the competitive edge they bring is serving him well.
“It is great,” Passaro said when analysing Italian tennis. “I am close [with] Matteo Arnaldi. We have played a lot of tournaments together and in doubles, so we are very close friends. Also with Lorenzo [Musetti], with Giulio [Zeppieri], Luca [Nardi] with Francesco [Maestrelli]. With these guys we have played a lot of Challengers together this year, it is something special to play all these tournaments together.
“When one starts to win, I think ‘I can also win a tournament’. So we improve our results every week and with the rankings we want to join each other. A very big help for us is the tournaments [in Italy]. We have the opportunity to play every week in Italy at a big level.”
Passaro has enjoyed a standout year, rising from No. 605 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings to his current career-high No. 122. He captured his first ATP Challenger Tour title in Trieste in July and earned a tour-level main draw win in Florence last month.
The 21-year-old also faced #NextGenATP Dane Holger Rune in the final in San Remo, while he played Musetti in Forli. Passaro feels he gained valuable experience from the matches despite defeat in both as he aims to gain revenge in Milan.
“Both [finals] I lost in the third set,” Passaro said. “Against Holger, I was 4-2 and break point to go 5-2 up in the third set. So it was not easy after the match but I know I have played well against a big player. I understand my capacity and what I can do. Against Lorenzo, he is a big player, so I just have to stay positive after this loss. In the last final I was very focused, I was determined [to win]. There was a little bit of pressure, I lost the first set and was nervous, but in the end, I just tried to play my best tennis.”
Photo Credit: Città di Trieste Challenger
Victory in Milan would put the icing on the 2022 cake for Passaro, who first picked up a racquet aged six. However, life could have been very different for the talented righty had he decided to pursue football over tennis when he was a teenager.
“When I was young I also played football. Then when I was 12 years old, I started to only play football, for one year. I stopped practising tennis and was just playing a few tournaments because it was too much. I was a goalkeeper in football and it was very nice. However, [it made me realise] I just wanted to play tennis.”
Passaro will look to become the fifth champion in Milan, after Hyeon Chung, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.
