World number two Jannik Sinner said Thursday he anticipates “a very, very difficult and tough challenge” as he prepares to defend his Shanghai Masters title, a day after winning the China Open.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old Italian dominated teenager Learner Tien to clinch his 21st ATP title in Beijing<\/a> on Wednesday, before travelling down to Shanghai hours later.<\/p>\n With no Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>, who has withdrawn because of “physical issues”, Sinner<\/a>‘s main rival in the ATP 1000 tournament looks to be four-time Shanghai champion Novak Djokovic<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I have only one practice session to get ready, but let’s see,” Sinner said.<\/p>\n “It’s going to be a very, very difficult and tough challenge, especially the first (match)… you never know what’s going to happen.”<\/p>\n Germany’s 49th-ranked Daniel Altmaier is Sinner’s first opponent<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last year, Sinner beat Djokovic in the final, but the 38-year-old Serb is coming into the competition fresh after cutting back the number of tournaments he plays.<\/p>\n The number of matches in the men’s and women’s tennis calendar has been a major talking point in recent years.<\/p>\n World number one Alcaraz said Tuesday before pulling out of Shanghai that “they have to do something with the schedule”, echoing the sentiments of fellow major champions Iga Swiatek<\/a> and Coco Gauff<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sinner said Thursday he didn’t “want to criticise anything”.<\/p>\n “Everyone thinks in different ways… I would say we can still choose as players,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number two Jannik Sinner said Thursday he anticipates “a very, very difficult and tough challenge” as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-185907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}