Top seed Carlos Alcaraz began his quest for a maiden ATP Finals trophy with a 7-6(5), 6-2 victory over Australia’s Alex de Minaur in their round-robin clash at the season-ending championships in Turin on Sunday.
Alcaraz won his opening match of the ATP Finals for the first time despite De Minaur’s fighting display where the Australian recovered from 4-1 down to force a tie-break in the first set before the Spaniard prevailed.
The two exchanged breaks of serve early in the second set, but Alcaraz broke twice more to lead 4-1 again and this time there was no comeback despite De Minaur’s valiant efforts in the opening match of the Jimmy Connors group.
Both players were looking to improve on their performance from last year, where Alcaraz lost two of his three round-robin matches in straight sets while De Minaur lost all three group matches. Alcaraz had lost the opening match in his two previous appearances.
“It was a really tough match,” Alcaraz said.
“On this surface, Alex exploits the speed of the ball to the maximum, he is super fast and very difficult on the return. I’m just very happy to have taken on this really difficult challenge.”
After winning the tiebreak, Alcaraz started to have a little more fun, putting his hand to his ear to milk the applause that greeted him by winning a long and entertaining rally to hold serve and lead 5-1 and there was no way back for De Minaur.
Alcaraz is also on course to finish the year as world number one, and in Turin he will need to reach the final with at least one round-robin victory or sweep his round-robin matches to secure the prize for a second time.
De Minaur is not out of the tournament and will need to beat Italian Lorenzo Musetti and American Taylor Fritz to finish in the top two of the group and qualify for the semi-finals.
Italian Jannik Sinner must retain his title to have a chance of finishing the year in first place.
One of the loudest cheers in the arena came when Sinner was shown in a commercial on the big screens, but the crowd will have to wait until Monday to see their favorite in action.
The ATP Finals, which bring together the eight best singles players and doubles teams in the world, have a record prize pool of $15.5 million and offer 1,500 points. The tournament culminates with the final at the Palasport Olimpico in Turin on November 16.
Reuters
