{"id":280240,"date":"2025-11-08T23:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T23:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/280240\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T23:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T23:47:09","slug":"novak-djokovic-withdraws-from-atp-tour-finals-after-eliminating-lorenzo-musetti-from-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/280240\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic withdraws from ATP Tour Finals after eliminating Lorenzo Musetti from race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic<\/a> defeated Lorenzo Musetti<\/a> in a thrilling final at the Hellenic Championship in Athens, Greece, to knock the Italian out of ATP Tour Finals<\/a> contention \u2014 at least temporarily.<\/p>\n

The ATP Tour confirmed later Saturday that Djokovic had withdrawn from the finals with a shoulder injury, granting Musetti the final spot.<\/p>\n

The 24-time Grand Slam champion ebbed, gasped and flung his way to victory, doing the splits off one improbable winner and recovering from a one-set deficit, and several spurned opportunities, to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 and lift his 101st career tennis title<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After the win, he sat in his chair exhausted by the joy of it, before giving his trophy speech in which he did not confirm whether he would play the ATP Tour Finals, which begins Sunday, Nov. 9. Then, with an Instagram post, he was out.<\/p>\n

Djokovic, 38, has been the wild card in the qualification race for the ATP Tour Finals for several weeks. He loomed over the Paris Masters despite not being present at the final ATP 1000 event of the year, as Musetti, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Bublik fought for one spot that could have become two, depending on Djokovic\u2019s feelings.<\/p>\n

By reaching the final in the French capital, Auger-Aliassime left Musetti in a win-or-bust scenario going into the Hellenic Championship, which Djokovic\u2019s family owns, having moved what was the Belgrade Open amid a backlash within Serbia over Djokovic\u2019s support for student protests against its president, Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107. Or perhaps win, bust or wait-and-see, with any result sufficient for the Italian were Djokovic to decide not to travel to Turin, as ended up transpiring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to thank the people of Greece for coming out, supporting sport,\u201d Djokovic said in his on-court interview. \u201cPlaying here, and being here, just feels like home.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Djokovic and Musetti awaiting their Grecian duel, the ATP Tour Finals’ pre-tournament party went ahead with six players rather than eight, following the round-robin draw that landed Djokovic in a group with world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz, Taylor Fritz of the U.S. and Alex de Minaur of Australia.<\/p>\n

Djokovic is 14-1 against the latter two players, and has said that he sees three-set events as his best forum in which to challenge Alcaraz and world No. 2 Jannik Sinner. The fast, indoor conditions in Turin, which suit Djokovic’s late-career evolution into a metronomically precise server who attacks at will, are another potential boost to his chances.<\/p>\n

Musetti, who had not won a title since 2022 going into the final, has said that his push to make the ATP Tour Finals for the first time \u2014 in his home country \u2014 has been a painful one. \u201cIt’s becoming not a dream, but a nightmare, honestly. I’m fighting every week, since Wimbledon I’m playing straight every week,\u201d he said during an on-court interview at the European Open in Brussels in October. He has now lost six consecutive finals, but will play the tournament he has yearned for through the past months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic defeated Lorenzo Musetti in a thrilling final at the Hellenic Championship in Athens, Greece, to knock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-280240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}