3 years later coming to the ATP Finals, as the hitting partner for top players, Stefanos Tsitsipas was finally able to leave the season-ending tournament as the champion.
Tsitsipas made a late rally to beat his opponent of ATP Finals Dominic Thiem by 6-7, 6-2 and7-6 to win his career’s biggest title yet. He has become the youngest winner of the ATP finals in the last 18 years.
Tsitsipas, the 21 years old Greek sensation said after his win, “I remember that I used to watch this event on TV and thought to myself, ‘Oh these guys have done an insane year to be able to play here.’ And now I was able to be in the position of a champion, so yes, it feels really awesome.”
For Tsitsipas, this had been an amazing journey of his career who first face Thiem back in 2016 at this very arena when he was only ranked top player of the world for junior rankings. He was invented to the hitting partner for the participants of the ATP Finals that year.
When he was reminded of that day, Tsitsipas said, “That is really unbelievable. I only remembered right now that it was that time that I met with Thiem as I came here as a hitting partner. I think my very first hit was with Thiem. It is really unbelievable. Is it not? Now we have faced each other in the finals of the very same tournament.”
During the deciding set, Tsitsipas was not able to capitalize on his early 30-1 lead but then went on to win the three points during the tiebreaker and win the title from Thiem.
This win makes it a great season end for Tsitsipas who had made it to the semis of the Australian Open and was able to win two ATP titles. He is the first-ever Greek male tennis player to have broken into the rankings of the world top 10.
Earlier, the doubles of the ATP Final ended with the Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut duo of Frenchmen was able to beat the parenthesis of New Zealand’s Michael Venus and South Africa’s Raven Klaasen by 6-3 and 6-4.
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