The clamp of the big court – Newspaper Kommersant No. 210 (7411) dated 11/12/2022

On Sunday, the final tournament of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) starts in Turin with a record prize fund of $ 14.75 million. One of the features of the upcoming competitions is related to the results of the draw. For the first time in the history of the Nitto ATP Finals, two Russian participants – Daniil Medvedev and Andrei Rublev – were in the same group, where their opponents will be the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas and the Serbian Novak Djokovic.

The final ATP tournament, which will be held for the second year in a row in the 12,000-seat Pala Alpitour hall in Turin, has at least three distinguishing features. The first is the unprecedented prize fund for this competition, which is $14.75 million and is more than twice as much as last year. In the event that the champion does not lose a single match in the group stage, he will get $4.74 million (a loss will reduce this amount by $383 thousand). Thus, in Turin, a new record for prize money earned by a tennis player in one tournament can be set. So far, it belongs to the Australian Ashleigh Barty, who received $ 4.4 million in 2019 after winning the final match of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) held in Shenzhen.

The second distinguishing feature of the upcoming competition is the absence of 19-year-old Spaniard Carlos Alcaras in the list of participants in the first racket of the world. At the recent Masters Series tournament in Paris, he suffered a very nasty abdominal injury and now has to go without training for about six weeks. Taking into account that the youngest leader of the world rating in the history of the Asia-Pacific region, who won the US Open in a brilliant style two months ago, was replaced by not the most charismatic American Taylor Fritz, this should be considered a serious image loss for the Turin tennis summit. Alcaraz himself may lose the title of the first racket of the world. This will happen if his age-old compatriot Rafael Nadal reaches the final unbeaten in the group stage (if he wins the tournament, the 36-year-old Nadal can lose one or even two matches in the group, which is theoretically possible), or the title in Turin will be taken by the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, without losing a single meeting.

Finally, the third feature of the upcoming competitions was revealed as a result of the draw. For the first time in the history of the Nitto ATP Finals, two Russian tennis players got into the same group – Daniil Medvedev, who took the title in London in 2021, and reached the final in Turin in 2022, and Andrey Rublev, who has not used his two attempts to reach the playoffs. They were joined by Tsitsipas and Serbian Novak Djokovic, and in another quarter, along with Nadal and Fritz, were Norwegian Kasper Ruud and Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime.

In theory, the Red, half-Russian, group looks much stronger than the Green. Djokovic, Tsitsipas and Medvedev have won the final tournament a total of seven times, while Nadal and his rivals have won none. However, this impression can be misleading, as surprises at the Nitto ATP Finals happen quite often. In any case, from 2017 to 2019, its winners were players from whom few people expected such agility at that time – Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, Alexander Zverev from Germany and Tsitsipas. Now excellent tennis is demonstrated by Auger-Aliassime, who this autumn felt a taste for victories and stamped three titles in a row: in Florence, Antwerp and Basel. It is not yet clear whether the Canadian debutant has passed the peak of form, but in principle he may well shoot.

The very fact of two Russians falling into one group cannot be assessed unambiguously. On the one hand, they are opposed by the most serious rivals. Tsitsipas, although he has not taken titles since June, shows a very solid level of tennis in general, and there is nothing to say about Djokovic. Missing the Australian and US Opens, as well as four North American Masters 1000 events, not earning points for winning Wimbledon and still being ranked eighth is simply unique.

On the other hand, Tsitsipas plays with some breakdowns, and Djokovic is also vulnerable on bad days, which was clearly demonstrated last Sunday by the final of the Rolex Paris Masters, which the 35-year-old veteran lost to the young Dane Holger Rune, who rose in the ranking to tenth place and who became the first substitute in Turin. So the winner of the first match in the Red Group between Daniil Medvedev and Andrei Rublev, who will play on Monday afternoon, in any case will get not the worst opportunity to reach the semi-finals. And for the loser, not all will be lost.

Evgeny Fedyakov