{"id":282311,"date":"2025-11-10T01:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T01:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/282311\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T01:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T01:11:11","slug":"carlos-alcaraz-defeats-alex-de-minaur-in-atp-finals-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/282311\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz defeats Alex de Minaur in ATP Finals opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

TURIN, Italy — Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> got his bid to win a first ATP Finals crown — and claim the year-end No. 1 ranking — 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’s players.<\/p>\n

Ben Shelton<\/a> saw three set points saved on his ATP Finals debut with two-time champion Alexander Zverev<\/a> 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<\/a> to end the year as No. 1 and the Spaniard can secure that — regardless of what his rival does — if he reaches the final.<\/p>\n

It was the first time Alcaraz had won his ATP Finals opener.<\/p>\n

“This tournament is one of the best tournaments we have on tour, without a doubt,” Alcaraz said. “We’re playing against the best players in the world, which shows how difficult and important it is.<\/p>\n

“I’ve 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’m proud about, I’m doing the right things to give myself a shot to try and win this tournament.”<\/p>\n

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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<\/a> is also in the Jimmy Connors group with Alcaraz, De Minaur and Lorenzo Musetti<\/a>, who replaced the injured Novak Djokovic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bjorn Borg group has Sinner, Zverev, Shelton and Felix Auger-Aliassime<\/a>.<\/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 — Carlos Alcaraz got his bid to win a first ATP Finals crown — and claim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-282311","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\/282311","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=282311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}