Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
German tennis star Alexander Zverev won his second ATP Finals title on Sunday, Nov. 21st, defeating current World No. 2 Daniil Medvedev in straight sets to finish a stellar 2021 season. The Finals, which invites the top eight ranked players of the year to compete in a round robin tournament, was being held in its new home in Turin, Italy for the first time after being staged at the O2 arena in London for almost fifteen years.
Zverev defeated 7 time year-end No.1 Novak Djokovic in the semi-final stages then followed it up with a flawless final match against this year’s U.S. Open champion Medvedev. With this performance, the 24 year old German will finish his year at number three in the world, his second season finish at this rarified level.
Medvedev had gone undefeated at the ATP Finals for the last two years, having won the 2020 edition of the event, going undefeated and winning all four of his matches on his trip to his second straight final. Last year, Medvedev beat Dominic Thiem in the final to lift his maiden year end finals victory in just his second appearance. 2021 marked Medvedev’s best season to date as he defeated Djokovic in the U.S/ Open final for his first major victory and in doing so prevented the World’s No.1 from completing his quest for a calendar year Grand Slam. Medvedev will finish the year with a 58-13 record and will compete next at the Davis Cup finals in Madrid, Spain for Team Russia.
This triumph was Zverev’s sixth of the season which also includes the prestigious Olympic gold medal victory in Tokyo, a tournament which is considered as coveted as one of the four major titles in tennis. The victory was made even sweeter for Zverev as coming into the final match he had lost 5 straight matches to Medvedev, including just 3 days ago in the round robin stages of the tournament in which he fell in a heartbreaking final set tiebreaker which he had led by a score of 4-2.
In addition to the German’s second win at the season finale in the last four years, Zverev also led all players on the ATP tour with 59 wins to just 15 losses. This season’s results were an important turn around for his career as he struggled to cope with his confidence and tendency to choke under pressure over the last two years.
Zverev dominated the match from the first point, pinning Medvedev deep in the court and dictating play off both his backhand and forehand wings. Zverev broke Medvedev just twice, once in each set to secure a relatively straightforward 6-4 6-4 victory in just over an hour. Zverev won nearly 90 percent of his first serve points and didn’t face a breakpoint en route to the win.
While Zverev may have taken the win at this year’s final event, few would argue against that the 2021 season belonged to world No.1 Djokovic who won three out of the four majors and fell short of completing the calendar year Grand Slam by just one match when he fell to Medvedev in this year’s U.S. Open final. More importantly, Djokovic equalled Roger Federer and Rafel Nadal’s major titles record of titles and broke former American Pete Sampras’s record of six year-end No.1 finishes by achieving a record seventh No.1 finish in 2021, an accomplishment he secured by winning the Paris Masters crown this year.
At the age of 34, Djokovic shows no signs of slowing down and appears to be more motivated than ever to surpass Federer and Nadal as the male player with most major victories when he plays the Australian Open in January and establish himself as the G.O.A.T. of professional men’s tennis.
