TURIN, Italy \u2014 Carlos Alcaraz got his bid to win a first\u00a0ATP Finals\u00a0crown \u2014 and claim the year-end No. 1 ranking \u2014 off to a positive start on Sunday with a straight-set victory over Alex de Minaur.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz recovered from a topsy-turvy opening set to triumph 7-6 (5), 6-2 over the seventh-seeded De Minaur in the opening match of the season-ending event for the top eight men\u2019s players.<\/p>\n
Ben Shelton saw three set points saved on his ATP Finals debut with two-time champion Alexander Zverev going on to beat the American 6-3, 7-6 (6).<\/p>\n
Top-seeded Alcaraz is involved in a tussle with defending champion Jannik Sinner to end the year as No. 1 and the Spaniard can secure that \u2014 regardless of what his rival does \u2014 if he reaches the final.<\/p>\n
It was the first time Alcaraz had won his ATP Finals opener.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis tournament is one of the best tournaments we have on tour, without a doubt,\u201d Alcaraz said. \u201cWe\u2019re playing against the best players in the world, which shows how difficult and important it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ve been struggling in the past few years to come to the end of the year with motivation. This year is a little bit different, which I\u2019m proud about, I\u2019m doing the right things to give myself a shot to try and win this tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcaraz seemed in firm control of the opening set. He had already broken De Minaur to love and threatened to do the same in the sixth game to go 5-1 up, but the Australian fought back to deuce before staving off another break point and then taking the game.<\/p>\n
De Minaur then broke back and took the set to a tiebreaker where he had a 5-3 advantage before Alcaraz rallied.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Alcaraz dominated the second set, dropping his serve early but winning all the other games and sealing the victory with a cross-court backhand on his second match point.<\/p>\n
Taylor Fritz is also in the Jimmy Connors group with Alcaraz, De Minaur and Lorenzo Musetti, who\u00a0replaced the injured Novak Djokovic.<\/p>\n
The Bjorn Borg group has Sinner, Zverev, Shelton and Felix Auger-Aliassime.<\/p>\n
It took the third-seeded Zverev just 28 minutes to wrap up the first set against Shelton, who then appeared to step up a gear and had a great chance to level the match in the second-set tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
Shelton raced into a 4-0 lead and wasted three set points before sending a backhand wide to hand Zverev the victory after 93 minutes.<\/p>\n
The top two finishers in each group advance to the semifinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TURIN, Italy \u2014 Carlos Alcaraz got his bid to win a first\u00a0ATP Finals\u00a0crown \u2014 and claim the year-end…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-274081","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\/274081","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=274081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}