Why losing in Monte Carlo won’t bother Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic
The top player from the previous year and the greatest player from this year both failed to finish a tournament in the manner that they had been accustomed to last week in Monte Carlo.
However, there’s a strong probability both Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic felt very good about the start of their 2024 clay seasons and pretty optimistic about where they might be headed after the inevitable disappointment of losing wore off.
With one quarter of the season over, Djokovic is still without a title, and this week is his fifth without one. Not too unusual.If you’re not Djokovic.
Sinner just suffered his second loss in a season that he has won 25 games. It was also another frustrating outing on clay, a surface at which he ought to be particularly skilled but isn’t, at least not yet.
For Sinner, the progress was obvious as day, but for the line judge’s eye, which probably cost him Saturday’s semifinal matchup with Stefanos Tsitsipas.Sinner had all the reasons to think he was going to the final early in the third and final set.
Tsitsipas was serving, trailing 1-3, and his opponent was one point away from breaking the Greek’s serve twice. When Tsitsipas’s second serve dragged a few inches, Sinner seemed to have the point under control, but the out call never materialized.That game, the following three, and the match were all won by Tsitsipas.
After a day, he defeated Norway’s Casper Ruud 6-1, 6-4 to win the title. He stated that Sinner’s encounter had probably been lost due to the missed call; Sinner claimed that he continued to worry about it and even attributed his subsequent cramps to it.
A difficult one to accept, Sinner said. There were moments when I was really hitting the ball — you know, playing well.Next year, all ATP events will use electronic line-calling services.
According to some of the most advanced data gathered by British tennis data company TennisViz, Sinner was in fact playing well. In actuality, the Italian was performing at the highest level in Monte Carlo.
Conversion score, or the proportion of points a player scores when in an attacking position, is one approach to gauge that.
The ability of a player to take advantage of opportunities and turn them into actual points is a sign of how clinical they are. An ATP Tour player will win 66 percent of the points on average.
Sinner’s conversion rate in Monte Carlo last week was 73 percent, the highest in the field and almost three percentage points higher than his nearest rival. His opponent in the final, Ruud, had a conversion percentage of 70.3%.
Head of performance at TennisViz Tom Corrie predicted the team will probably win the tournament if that double fault was called.The big-serving former skier from Italy, Jannik Sinner, has overthrown Novak Djokovic.
This year, Sinner has already emerged victorious in three competitions, including his maiden Grand Slam victory at the Australian Open. In two others, he has advanced to the semi-finals.
He has always been the tour’s best trust the process player, but now more than ever, his commitment to moving at his own pace is paying off.
In other words, yeah, he didn’t win another championship in Monte Carlo, but in just three months, he rose from fourth to second in the rankings, achieved his maiden Grand Slam, and passed Carlos Alcaraz, who appeared to be on a different level just a year ago.
The Italian advanced to the semifinals of this competition the previous year, but he lost in the second round of the French Open and was unable to get past the quarterfinals in any of his other three clay-court competitions.
That was before to his forehand and serve turning into some of the most potent strokes in the game.
