Jannik and Novak face each other again this afternoon
Not just Novak Djokovic… Jannik Sinner will have to face the world number 1 again in his first final at the ATP Finals (0re 18), who was in great form last night in the semi-final against Alcaraz, but also another very unpleasant one “Enemy”: the dreaded “Curse of the Masters”. In fact, it has already happened 20 times in the history of the event that two tennis players who had already competed in the group competed against each other in the final round, and the numbers speak for themselves. The winner of the Robin Round match only repeated itself in the final eight timeswhile the losing team got revenge twelve times in the final and won the “Maestro” trophy.
Let’s look at them in detail.
8 wins in both the round robin and the final:
1978 – McEnroe on Ashe
1981 – Lendl on gerulaitis
2001 – Hewitt on Grosjean
2003 – Federer over Agassi
2004 – Federer over Hewitt
2008 – Djokovic over Davydenko
2011 – Federer on Tsonga
2017 – Dimitrov on Goffin
These are the 12 finals in which the winner took revenge for his defeat in the round-robin:
1976 – Orantes on Fibak
1987 – Wilander about Edberg
1989 – Edberg on Becker
1990 – Agassi on Edberg
1994 – Sampras on Becker
1996 – Sampras on Becker
1999 – Sampras on Agassi
2000 – Kürten on Agassi
2005 – Nalbandian on Federer
2015 – Djokovic over Federer
2018 – Zverev over Djokovic
2021 – Zverev over Medvedev
Sinner will have a double mountain to climb, a very strong Djokovic and also the cabal. The ATP Finals is an extremely fascinating tournament, the only one with groups that allow for this anomaly. For a tennis player accustomed to the age-old rule “Whoever wins goes on, whoever loses goes home,” it is not easy to face a player who was beaten in the decisive act a few days earlier. It is something really complicated to deal with mentally, in addition to the difficulty of balancing the value of the opponents, the best eight of the year. If Jannik manages to win the fifth match of the tournament – everyone! – and if he beats Djokovic for the second time in a week, he will not only have won the Finals trophy, his greatest career achievement, but also have achieved a real masterpiece.
Marco Mazzoni
