Stefanos Tsitsipas's express climb continues ... The Greek won a tight final against Austria's Dominic Thiem (6-7 (6), 6-2, 7-6 (4)), Sunday 17 November in London, to win the 2019 Tennis Masters, at just 21 years old.
"I'm the king of the world." 🤣 @ StefTsitsipas | #NittoATPFinals pic.twitter.com/8p4jO8W2i9
ATP Tour (@atptour) November 17, 2019Tsitsipas (number 7), the youngest winner of the event since the Australian Leyton Hewitt in 2001, won last year the Next Gen, the Masters reserved for players under 21 years.
His young age did not prevent him from showing a good maturity in this final and even the whole tournament, which he disputed for the first time, never losing the thread of his game.
Rate of first balls, direct fouls, winning points, there was not the thickness of a sheet of cigarette paper between the two players in the first set of this final.
One would be tempted to put on the account of the greater maturity of Thiem (26 years) the gain of the first set in tiebreak (8-6), but the insurance displayed by Tsitsipas with its mixture of daring and efficiency - 12 points won on 13 net goals in the first run - do not argue this way.
And the many times Thiem was seen talking to himself to encourage or lecture him showed that he was on the line. Impression confirmed by the violent decompression at the beginning of the second set for the Austrian.
Tsitsipas intractable on his service
Disrupted by a virus during the week, his career, with victories against Federer, Djokovic and the Zverev tenant, had probably broken his reserves.
He suffered a terrible 16 points to 2 to be led 4-0, before just managing the end of the set in anticipation of a hypothetical second wind (6-2).
He had to wait until he was broken again in the third game of the set and led 3-1 after a shutout of Tsitsipas to suddenly find his typing quality.
He was back in the sixth game, inflicting only the fourth loss on the Greek side of the tournament, and it was again in the tie break that the two men explained themselves.
Committing fewer direct errors than his opponents (17 against 3 in the last set), Tsitsipas recorded the best victory of his career and became the fourth straight novice to win the Masters after Andy Murray (2016), Grigor Dimitrov (2017) ) and Alexander Zverev (2018).
With AFP