TURIN, Italy \u2014\u00a0Jannik Sinner has done his part. Now it\u2019s up to Carlos Alcaraz to win one more match and set up another important final against his biggest rival.<\/p>\n
Sinner beat Alex de Minaur 7-5, 6-2 on Saturday \u2014 improving to 13-0 against the Australian \u2014 to reach the championship match of the ATP Finals before his home fans.<\/p>\n
The second-ranked Sinner is aiming to retain his title in the season-ending tournament for the year\u2019s top eight players. In Sunday\u2019s final, Sinner will face Alcaraz or Felix Auger-Aliassime, who were playing later.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz already secured the year-ending No. 1 ranking but is seeking to reach his first final at this event.<\/p>\n
Sinner and Alcaraz have met in the last three Grand Slam finals: Alcaraz beat Sinner in a fifth-set tiebreaker to win the French Open; Sinner gained a measure of revenge by beating Alcaraz for the Wimbledon trophy; then Alcaraz again came out on top at the US Open.<\/p>\n
Sinner also won the Australian Open \u2014 beating Alexander Zverev in the final \u2014 so he and Alcaraz each won two majors this year.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the third consecutive final in Turin for Sinner, who hasn\u2019t dropped a set at finals since getting beat by Novak Djokovic in the 2023 championship match \u2014 a run of 18 consecutive sets.<\/p>\n
Sinner saved three break points in his opening service game after falling behind 0-40 and then finally managed to break De Minaur for a 6-5 advantage before serving the set out.<\/p>\n
The second set was never really in question, as Sinner jumped out to a 4-0 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was happy with how I served and with how I reacted in the important moments,\u201d Sinner said.<\/p>\n
Sinner extended his winning streak on indoor hard courts to 31 matches \u2014 also stretching back to that 2023 final against Djokovic. He hasn’t dropped his serve this week.<\/p>\n
Sinner\u2019s first pro victory over De Minaur came in 2019 in the final of the Next Gen ATP Finals. Sinner has won 29 of the 31 sets they’ve played.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how to beat him. It\u2019s just not that easy to do,\u201d De Minaur said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to hit the ball very hard, very flat, very deep and very close to the lines. It is something that I try to do, but it\u2019s obviously not the easiest thing to do \u2026 I need to serve well throughout the whole match. My serve dropped a little bit and could have been better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TURIN, Italy \u2014\u00a0Jannik Sinner has done his part. Now it\u2019s up to Carlos Alcaraz to win one more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-285348","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\/285348","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=285348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}