The last week has marked important signs for the Race to Turin, the race to get closer to the ATP Finals, the last big event of this interesting 2022. The Tokyo and Nur-Sultan tournaments smile at the United States and Serbia with Taylor Fritz and Novak Djokovic taking important steps towards the year-end tournament.
With victory in Kazakhstan, former world number one and winner of 21 Slam titles, Novak Djokovic, secures his place in the Turin Finals. The Serbian champion gains five positions in the Race, beating Jannik Sinner and Matteo Berrettini, among others, to 10th in the world.
Thanks to the victory in New York, the Balkan tennis player can afford to remain in the Top 20 regulation and now has more than 1,000 points ahead of the twenty-first place currently occupied by the Spanish Roberto Bautista Agut.
A different situation for Taylor Fritz, however, who, thanks to the victory in Tokyo, enters the heated fight for the last place available for the Finals. Alcaraz, Nadal, Ruud and Stefanos Tsitsipas are already qualified for the ATP Finals in Turin and now we can probably add Novak Djokovic to this list.
Russians Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev are getting closer to qualifying for Turin thanks to Nur Sultan’s semi-finals, while the fight for the last available place on the circuit is very intense. With the victory in Tokyo, Fritz overtakes Auger Aliassime and is only 25 points ahead of the Canadian and 160 points ahead of Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz.
Almost desperate situation for Italian tennis: Jannik Sinner and Matteo Berrettini lose positions. The two are more than 500 points behind Taylor Fritz and they are very far away, between them and the American there are 6-7 players in the middle and the situation seems very complicated.
Djokovic has shone in recent weeks
Novak Djokovic fans are happy and just lament a little how Nole’s season could have been had it been complete. At a press conference, returning to his feat, a very simple and quite demonstrative summary was allowed.
“I couldn’t ask for a better start to the season. After more than three months since the Wimbledon final and practically since Madrid, I only lost to Rafa, everything else was just victories. I am super motivated to finish the season as well as I have for the last two weeks.
This title means a lot to me, considering everything that has happened this year. I’ve never had a three-month break, except for the times I’ve been injured.»
