Sinner sees off Machac in Shanghai SF, seals Year-End No. 1

p Can a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/jannik-sinner/s0ag/overview'Jannik Sinner/a convert his 2024 hard-court dominance into another title at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/shanghai/5014/overview'Rolex Shanghai Masters/a? /p

p The Italian improved to 44-4 for the season on the surface Saturday with a 6-4, 7-5 semi-final triumph against a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/tomas-machac/m0fh/overview'Tomas Machac/a at the Chinese ATP Masters 1000. Sinner held firm in the face of some huge baseline hitting from his Czech opponent to complete a one-hour, 44-minute victory and advance to his maiden Shanghai championship match. /p

p “I think we all saw how much talent he has, how much firepower he can produce,” said Sinner, when asked if Machac’s quarter-final upset against a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/carlos-alcaraz/a0e2/overview'Carlos Alcaraz/a had impacted his own preparations for facing the Czech. “I had to be very careful in every service game, because he returns very aggressively and very fast. /p

p “I just tried to stay there every point, to see what was going to happen, like you saw in the last game. Just playing every point with the maximum intensity I could, so I’m very happy about that. I’m happy to be back in a final again.” /p

p By clinching victory, Sinner simultaneously earned a slice of tennis history. His win against Machac ensured he will finish the season with ATP Year-End No. 1 presented by PIF honours. He is the first Italian to achieve that feat. /p

p/p

p With his 64th match win of the season overall, Sinner set a final showdown with record four-time Shanghai titlist a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/novak-djokovic/d643/overview'Novak Djokovic/a or seventh seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/taylor-fritz/fb98/overview'Taylor Fritz/a. The No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings is chasing a Tour-leading seventh title of the year, and his third at Masters 1000 level in 2024 following his victories in Miami and Cincinnati. /p

p “I felt like in Miami I was hitting the ball very good,” said Sinner, when asked to compare his on-court feeling across Miami, Cincinnati and Shanghai. “The conditions that week and how I touched the ball, I felt great. In Cincinnati it’s a bit different. The conditions there are usually a bit windy, it’s very difficult to play there. It was more like a mental week. /p

p “[Here in Shanghai] I just try to stay calm. It’s not every day it will be the same. I’m just looking forward to [the final], to play every match I can in the best possible way and to try to find a solution somehow. I guess that’s all I’m going to try to do tomorrow and hopefully it’s going to win the match.” /p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="nl" dir="ltr"Jannik’s Jaw-Dropper ????a href="https://twitter.com/janniksin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@janniksin/a | a href="https://twitter.com/SH_RolexMasters?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@SH_RolexMasters/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RolexShanghaiMasters?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#RolexShanghaiMasters/a a href="https://t.co/I99tTd7lVq"pic.twitter.com/I99tTd7lVq/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1845030778863759540?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"October 12, 2024/a/blockquote script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

p Sinner was under pressure early against Machac, who appeared full of confidence after upsetting Alcaraz with a scintillating display in the quarter-finals. The Czech broke Sinner’s serve in the opening game and maintained a generally high level throughout his maiden Masters 1000 semi-final. /p

pYet the key to Sinner’s victory was how clinical he was at key moments. The World No. 1 decisively amped up the pressure on Machac’s serve in the final game of both sets to clinch a hard-earned victory and improve to 2-0 in the pair’s Lexus ATP Head2Head series. /p

p Sinner finished the match having converted three of seven break points he earned, according to Infosys ATP Stats. He is now 54-0 against players outside the Top 20 dating back to the 2023 a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/us-open/560/overview'US Open/a. /p

p [NEWSLETTER FORM] /p