By Maria Somova, Year 12
The 13th of October 2024 was the end of the Shanghai ATP Masters tournament with Jannick Sinner receiving his 17th title on the ATP Tour and denying Novak Djokovic his 100th career title.
This ATP1000 event has been held annually since 2009 at Qi Zhong court in Shanghai, China. The main sponsor of this tournament currently is the Rolex company. Top 10 male stars of the tennis world – Jannick Sinner, Alexander Zverev, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev, T. Fritz, H.Hurkacz, C.Ruud and Grigor Dimitrov have competed alongside other athletes for the 1,1 million US dollars prize for the place of the winner of the singles. Last year’s (2023) winner of the Shanghai ATP was Hubert Hurekacz, currently number 8 in the world.
Today’s article will highlight and summarise the most interesting and capturing matches that took place during last week’s ATP Masters in Shanghai.
The show was stolen from the intense competition between Sinner and Djokovic by 5 Chinese mainland players who competed in the singles main draw – the most ever seen at an ATP Tour level tournament. Two of them passed into the second round, where Wu Yibing achieved the highest point in his career (so far) by passing through to the third round where Spanish star Carlos Alcaraz stopped him.
The weather unfortunately was not ideal during this ATP tournament as it delayed quite a few games. October is not a rainy season in China. However this year, specifically the week of the tournament the precipitation levels were extremely high. In Shanghai there is only one closed court for this level of championships, which caused the delay for some matches to be almost four days and some matches had to be transferred to training courts World number seven T. Fritz advanced not without difficulty into the third round of the tournament two days after his match against T. Atmane had been suspended because of rain. Andrey Rublev’s match against Alejandro Fokina was also delayed due to the harsh weather conditions.
Some of the unexpected outcomes of the Shanghai masters were the losses of Alexander Zverev and Gregor Dimitrov. After surviving Griekspoor, Zverev reached the fourth round of the tournament where he lost to a belgian tennis player – David Goffin. Goffin won 6-4 7-5 in just under two hours and secured his spot in quarterfinals. Another defeat that struck tennis fans was the loss of the bulgarian national champion Grigor Dimitrov. He was defeated 6-3 3-6 6-4 by a 19 year old Czech player Jakub Mensik.
As for the path to the final of Shanghai Masters, on October 12th there was an intensive match between Taylor Fritz and Novak Djokovic for the place in the final, in which Djokovic claimed his victory 6-4 7-6 and became a step closer to his 100th career title. However unfortunately he lost to a US Open winner – the italian player Jannik Sinner.
Overall, this ATP Masters was extremely interesting and unusual due to the weather and very unpredictable outcomes of some matches. Moreover, Chinese fans were probably the most supportive and enthusiastic of all players regardless of who they were rooting for, which brought some joy and surprise to all competitors.
