serve a doping ban<\/a> but still collected six titles \u2013 the second-best haul of his career \u2013 after reaching the final in 10 of the 12 tournaments he entered.<\/p>\nThis latest win extends his prolific record at the end-of-season showpiece event, where he has not lost a match since being defeated by Novak Djokovic in the 2023 final.<\/p>\n
Sinner becomes just the fourth player to successfully retain the men’s singles title this century, joining Lleyton Hewitt, Roger Federer and Djokovic.<\/p>\n
All signs point to more dominance by 22-year-old Alcaraz and 24-year-old Sinner in the new year, and more contests played at this high level can only be a good thing for the sport.<\/p>\n
After the first 11 games came and went without a break point, Sinner was forced to save set point with a huge second serve.<\/p>\n
He then dominated the tie-break, capitalising on a run of backhand errors from Alcaraz and executing a couple of pinpoint lobs, to seal the first set.<\/p>\n
His usually reliable serve faltered in the opening game of the second, with a pair of untimely double faults gifting Alcaraz, sporting a bandaged right thigh after receiving treatment earlier in the match, an early break.<\/p>\n
However, Sinner hit back with a break of his own in the sixth game before saving a break point in the seventh to keep the set on serve, whipping the crowd into a frenzy with each point he won.<\/p>\n
With Alcaraz serving to stay in the match in the 12th game, Sinner forced deuce with a down-the-line backhand before dropping to the floor as consecutive errors from his opponent confirmed the Italian’s successful title defence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite missing out on the year-end number one ranking, Sinner said there could be “no better ending” to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-288999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288999","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=288999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}