World No. 1 Novak Djokovic will face World No. 4 Jannik Sinner in the championship match at the 2023 ATP Finals in Turin. The match will be played on Sunday, November 19, 2023.
Novak Djokovic won the heavyweight battle against close rival Carlos Alcaraz to book his spot in the championship match of this year’s ATP Finals. After the head-spinning hype accompanying the match in the buildup, Djokovic won the first straight-sets encounter between them in the series 6-3, 6-2. The Serbian star has made a career of proving people wrong, and even in a week his matches were fraught with setbacks and hardships, he almost won every match.
The one match Djokovic hasn’t won at this tournament was at the round-robin stage where he fell to Jannik Sinner in three sets. Sinner has been in red-hot form as he attempts to become the first Italian man to win the Nitto ATP Finals. He’s already the first Italian to reach the title match playing some inspired tennis and stands a win away from going undefeated and pocketing the $4,801,500 – the single largest paycheck in ATP history. Unlike Djokovic, Sinner encountered a more difficult route, being stretched to three sets by Daniil Medvedev in his third match in a row at the event. Does he have enough left in the tank?
Djokovic leads Sinner 3-1 in their head-to-head. Sinner’s win came at this very tournament when he ended Djokovic’s 19-match unbeaten streak in style. He’ll now need to play even better as the Serbian appears to have woken up. The crowd will definitely cheer for Sinner every step of the way, but it’s not an unfamiliar setting for Djokovic who has played in a near-partisan atmosphere before and emerged unscathed. At 36, he appears to age in reverse and with a record-breaking seventh title on the line and on the back of a stunning win in the semifinal, it would take a brave person to bet against the World No. 1.