Much to the delight of the Italian crowd inside Turin’s Inalpi Arena, Jannik Sinner rolled through his round-robin group in undefeated fashion. His reward is a semifinal matchup with Casper Ruud–the runner-up from the other quartet–on Saturday night.
Shockingly, Sinner and Ruud will be going head-to-head for just the third time in their careers and for the first time since 2021. Both of their previous encounters have come on the indoor hard courts of Vienna, where Sinner prevailed 7-6(2), 6-3 in ’20 and 7-5, 6-1.
Both guys are obviously much different players now, but Sinner remains a massive favorite–an even bigger one, in fact, than he was three or four years ago. The 23-year-old has soared to No. 1 in the world and is now the proud owner of two Grand Slam titles (Australian Open and U.S. Open earlier this season). Sinner is an amazing 68-6 for the 2024 campaign following straight-set wins this week over Alex de Minaur, Taylor Fritz, and Daniil Medvedev.
However, Ruud cannot be entirely counted out because he is awesome at the Nitto ATP Finals. Since 2000, the seventh-ranked Norwegian is the third player to qualify for the semifinals in each of his first three tournament appearances–joining Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka on that list. It’s hard to explain, too, given that Ruud is by far at his best on clay and has never done much on indoor hard courts outside of Turin. So far this week the 25-year-old has posted wins over Carlos Alcaraz and Andrey Rublev to along with a setback against Alexander Zverev.
Unfortunately for Ruud, he is facing the best player in the world and will have the crowd against him. Anything other than a straight-set success for Sinner would be a big surprise.
Pick: Sinner in 2
WWW?
Fritz in 3
Sinner in 2