Tennis: Djokovic won his seventh ATP Finals title

The Serb secured his seventh title at the season-ending tennis tournament on Sunday with a 6:3,6:3 win in the final against the Italian Jannik Sinner, making him the sole record holder. Djokovic also successfully defended his title from last year. Local hero Sinner won his group game against Djokovic, but was clearly inferior to him in the final.

On the way to his 98th final win on the tour – seven of them this year – the top-seeded Serb used the only break point in set one against this year’s Vienna winner, hardly made any mistakes and brought his service through in the second round. The 36-year-old won almost everything there was to win this year. Only the final at Wimbledon was lost against the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz. If Djokovic had won this one match, he would have won the Grand Slam at the US Open in September.

After his victory, Djokovic hugged his two children and celebrated. “This is a very special moment. It was definitely one of my best seasons. The way Carlos and Jannik played, I had to raise my level,” he said after his gala, with which he beat the Swiss Roger Federer as the finals record winner let himself. “I always wanted to play in front of my children when they were at an age where they understood what I was doing. I’m so lucky to have two angels like that.”

Sinner won in three sets against Djokovic in the group on Tuesday in a high-class match that lasted more than three hours. Only because the South Tyrolean then won against the Dane Holger Rune did Djokovic even survive the preliminary round. But there was no sign of Djokovic’s gratitude in the final. He gave the tournament’s number four a lesson. Powerful, dominant, fully concentrated – at times a class difference between the two was noticeable.

After just 38 minutes, Djokovic took set one. Sinner looked desperately at his team in the stands. In the second round, the world number one immediately managed another break. The Italian fans tried to encourage Sinner with chants, but with the score at 3-2, the Italian missed two break chances that could have brought him back into the match. Djokovic survived this small phase of weakness and was no longer deterred on the way to the title.

Djokovic and the 22-year-old Sinner could meet again at the Davis Cup final tournament taking place in Malaga from Tuesday to Sunday. In the quarter-finals, the Serbs will face Great Britain, who are without Scot Andy Murray, while Italy will face the Netherlands.