Credit: X
Stefanos Tsitsipas retired midway due to a medical reason after just three games of his second match at the ATP Finals on Tuesday, November 14. With this, Tsitsipas handed over the victory to Holger Rune. The 2019 champion was trailing 2-1 in the opening set when he had a long conversation with his coach before retiring midway through the final.
It happened just 17 minutes into the play, and with this, Tsitsipas ended up getting booed from the crowd in Turin. The Greek had lost to home favourite Jannik Sinner 6-4, 6-4 on Sunday and cut short his practice session. However, he said that he was “absolutely fine.” After his mid-match retirement, he said, “My apologies to all the fans who came today. I’m gutted that I wasn’t able to finish. It’s a shame also not to give that spot to someone else to at least try & do something with it.”
Rune had also lost his opener 7-6 (4), 6-7 (1), 6-3 to top-ranked Novak Djokovic. After winning the game, he said, “For sure (not the way I wanted to win). It is very unfortunate. You could see in the first service game, he was not serving as full as he can. For sure, something was up and when he called the physio I knew. It’s a long season, I wish him all the best.”
Rune reached quarter-finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon and won the title in Munich. He will now face Jannik Sinner in his final round-robin match on Thursday.
