Defending champion Jannik Sinner stormed to a 7-5, 6-2 victory over Alex de Minaur in the last four of the ATP Finals.<\/p>\n
The result sealed Australian de Minaur’s 13th straight loss to world number two Sinner.<\/p>\n
Sinner had to dig deep to get his first break of the match, which tipped the first set in his favour.<\/p>\n
The Italian four-time major winner took the first four games of the second set to ensure victory, backed by a supportive crowd at Turin’s Palasport Olimpico.<\/p>\n
Sinner has now reached the final of the season-ending championship for the third time in a row.<\/p>\n
“It was a very tough match, especially at the beginning of the first set,” Sinner said.<\/p>\n
“It felt like [de Minaur] was serving great.<\/p>\n
“In the second set \u2026 my level raised and I tried to be a bit more aggressive, which worked very well.”<\/p>\n
World number seven de Minaur fended off two break points to hold the opening game of the match and was on the verge of a break after going 40-0 up in the second, but Sinner was able to hold.<\/p>\n
Neither player could get a break as the match stayed even until the 11th game, when Sinner’s perfectly angled backhand evaded a stumbling de Minaur to put the Italian 6-5 ahead.<\/p>\n
Sinner held the next game with ease to clinch the first set.<\/p>\n
He dominated the second set, bringing up match point with a strong backhand volley, before sealing victory with a powerful forehand that was well outside de Minaur’s reach.<\/p>\n
Top seed Carlos Alcaraz faces Canadian eighth seed F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime in the second semifinal.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion Jannik Sinner stormed to a 7-5, 6-2 victory over Alex de Minaur in the last four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[18278,6567,64,63,962,54077,2649,754,9738,103500,85,747,119419,165423],"class_list":["post-286755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-alex-de-minaur","tag-atp-finals","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-felix-auger-aliassime","tag-final","tag-jannik-sinner","tag-semifinals","tag-semis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-turin","tag-world-number-one"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}