The 2021 year-end championship event is here in men\u2019s tennis. Let\u2019s look at the first ATP Finals to be held in Turin, Italy, after the event\u2019s long run in London, England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Favorite: Novak Djokovic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Though Daniil Medvedev deserves and has earned the utmost respect in men\u2019s tennis, specifically at any hardcourt event such as this one, Djokovic is still the favorite. Keep in mind that he lost to Medvedev in the U.S. Open final at the end of an exhausting summer run which included Wimbledon and the Tokyo Olympics. Medvedev did not go very deep at either Wimbledon or the Olympics, so he was a lot fresher heading into that U.S. Open final. Djokovic took a month and a half off after the U.S. Open and recharged his batteries. He was able to beat Medvedev in the Paris-Bercy final a week ago. Djokovic is still worthy of ultimate respect as the toughest player to defeat in men\u2019s tennis. He did, after all, come within one win of the Grand Slam, going 27-1 this year at major tournaments. He is still the man to beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Likely to Disappoint: Stefanos Tstisipas<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Greek youngster has been terrible ever since he blew a two-set lead to Djokovic in the French Open final back in June. He crashed out early at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. He didn\u2019t make the final in Cincinnati or Indian Wells or any other 1,000-point tournament final in 2021 in the second half of the year. Tsitsipas clearly lost confidence, struggling to find his game. He also recently admitted that he wasn\u2019t entirely physically healthy, with some wrist problems entering into the equation for him. It would not be surprising if he doesn\u2019t finish these ATP Finals. He needs to hit the reset button and simply get ready for 2022. The key note here is that Tsitsipas is in Djokovic\u2019s group, while Medvedev gets a tougher test from Alexander Zverev in his group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dark Horse: Matteo Berrettini<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Is Berrettini, the Wimbledon finalist, likely to advance to the semifinals? Not with Medvedev and Zverev both standing in his way. However, these ATP Finals are in Turin, where Berrettini will have a significant home-court advantage from a boisterous Italian crowd. That could really help him out in tight situations at the end of sets or in final sets when players are physically struggling and need an extra shot of energy. Berrettini has the game to win best-of-three-set matches. The fact that he got drawn into a group with two superior hardcourt players is a problem. He would have loved to have been in the Djokovic group, because while it would have been hard to beat Djokovic, Berrettini could have beaten the other two players in the group and advanced to the semifinals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, Berrettini will certainly be inspired to play. Maybe Zverev will not play this event as well as many people expect he will. That would open the door for Berrettini to make a run and put the capper on a great 2021 filled with progress and positive notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2021 year-end championship event is here in men\u2019s tennis. Let\u2019s look at the first ATP Finals to be held…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":8660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19906,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904\/revisions\/19906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}