{"id":26491,"date":"2025-11-10T18:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T23:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/10\/sinner-defeats-auger-aliassime-to-begin-atp-finals-title-defense\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T18:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T23:22:11","slug":"sinner-defeats-auger-aliassime-to-begin-atp-finals-title-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/10\/sinner-defeats-auger-aliassime-to-begin-atp-finals-title-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinner defeats Auger-Aliassime to begin ATP Finals title defense"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

TURIN, Italy — Jannik Sinner got his title defense off to a flying start with a 7-5, 6-1 victory over Felix Auger-Aliassime at the ATP Finals on Monday in front of his home fans.<\/p>\n

Aiming for number one in the year-end rankings. Sinner needs to win the season-ending event for the top eight players and hopes Carlos Alcaraz doesn’t make it to the finals.<\/p>\n

Auger-Aliassime, ranked No. 8, appeared to be slowed down by a left calf problem near the end of the first set. During the second set, he received two treatments from the trainer.<\/p>\n

“It was very tough until 6-5, but then he had physical problems,” Sinner said of breaking the Canadian’s serve to end the first set.<\/p>\n

Sinner won the title in Turin last year without dropping a set and has not lost in this tournament since losing to Novak Djokovic in the 2023 final.<\/p>\n

A placard reading “Italian Pride” hung on Sinner high above the crowd, and during his on-court postgame interview, he was serenaded with soccer-like chants of “Ole, ole, ole. Thinner, thinner.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a special tournament and place for me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sinner has won all four meetings with Auger-Aliassime this year, including the US Open semifinals and the recent Paris Masters final.<\/p>\n

Sinner and Alexander Zverev lead Bjorn Borg’s group with one win each after Zverev defeated Ben Shelton on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The top two from each group advance to the semifinals.<\/p>\n

Sinner won 89% of his points on his first serve, winning 32 of his 36 points.<\/p>\n

“My group is a very difficult group, with some guys who serve really, really strong,” Sinner said. “It’s difficult to recover as soon as you concede a break, so you have to stay focused for most of the match.”<\/p>\n

Fritz defeats an exhausted Musetti<\/strong><\/hl2><\/p>\n

Earlier, Taylor Fritz defeated late starter Lorenzo Musetti 6-3, 6-4.<\/hl2><\/p>\n

Unlike Musetti, who is playing for the first time, Fritz has a proven track record in this tournament, having reached the final last year and the semi-finals in his debut in 2022. He also spent the past week preparing on an indoor court.<\/p>\n

“It’s a very important game to win. If we want to get out of the group, I would say so,” Fritz said. \u201cHe plays a completely different game, slicing and everything, so it took me a while to get used to it.<\/p>\n

“I was able to avoid a break early in the game when he had a chance. After that, I felt like I was more enthusiastic about the game. … I thought I played really well.”<\/p>\n

Musetti defeated Italian Djokovic in Saturday’s Athens final, coming on in the second half in place of Djokovic, who withdrew with a shoulder injury. Musetti had just arrived in Turin on Sunday but was unable to ride to the cheers of his hometown crowd.<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t at 100%, especially physically,” Musetti said. “Mentally, I’m really happy to be here. I’m very proud of myself, my team and what we accomplished. I tried to fight with what I had today.”<\/p>\n

Fritz and Alcaraz lead the Jimmy Connors group with one win each, while Alex de Minaur and Musetti follow with one loss each.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Fritz will play Alcaraz and Musetti will play De Minaur.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TURIN, Italy — Jannik Sinner got his title defense off to a flying start with a 7-5, 6-1 victory over Felix Auger-Aliassime at the ATP Finals on Monday in front of his home fans. Aiming for number one in the year-end rankings. Sinner needs to win the season-ending event for the top eight players and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2423,6127,27,784,111,29,24,361],"class_list":{"0":"post-26491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp","9":"tag-augeraliassime","10":"tag-defeats","11":"tag-defense","12":"tag-finals","13":"tag-sinner","14":"tag-tennis","15":"tag-title"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}