Novak Djokovic has withdrawn from next week’s ATP Finals in Turin with an unspecified injury, making this the first year since 2001 when there will be no member of the “Big Three” at the event.
The announcement came after Djokovic was photographed enjoying a beach holiday in the Maldives, and was perhaps not the greatest of surprises, given that he had expressed a lack of interest in the Finals in September.
“Torino is not my goal at all, to be honest,” he said then. “I am not chasing ATP Finals, I am not chasing the rankings. As far as I am concerned, I am done with those tournaments for my career.”
Djokovic might even have hoped that rivals such as Casper Ruud, Andrey Rublev and Alex de Minaur would perform better at last week’s Paris Masters, thus moving past his tally of 3,910 rankings points for the season and saving him the bother of having to withdraw.
As it happened, Ruud and Rublev lost in the first round of Paris, while De Minaur went out in the quarter-finals. Hence Djokovic’s message on Instagram: “It’s quite an honour to qualify for the ATP Finals in Turin. I was really looking forward to playing there, but due to ongoing injury I won’t be playing next week.”
ANALYSIS
Olympics glory the highlight of Djokovic’s curious year
Djokovic finishes 2024 with an interesting record. He won no titles on the ATP Tour, from 10 events entered, but scored a hugely rewarding triumph at the Paris Olympics, where he defeated Carlos Alcaraz in a final for the ages. Afterwards, he described that gripping 7-6, 7-6 victory as “the biggest achievement of my career.”
No one was terribly surprised when Djokovic lacked sharpness at the US Open, his next tournament after the long-desired Olympic gold which he had come close to claiming at three previous Games. “I have played some of the worst tennis I have ever played,” he said, after losing to unheralded Australian Alexei Popyrin in the third round.
But Djokovic was still good enough to reach the final of last month’s Shanghai Masters, where he lost to Jannik Sinner in straight sets.
So where do we go from here? It’s a difficult question to answer. The first significant tournament of the new year will come in Melbourne, where Djokovic has had a virtual lock on the Australian Open for the past 17 years, winning an astonishing 10 titles in that time.
Normally, he would be among the favourites for that event, as he has been every season since he beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the 2008 final to register his first major trophy.
But will Djokovic – who turned 37 in May – have the motivation to put himself through the gruelling off-season work required for success in the new season?
Also, can he realistically overcome the two strongest players of the moment – Alcaraz and Sinner – over the best-of-five-set format?
This season, he was put in his place by both men at the majors, with Sinner scoring a comfortable four-set win in the Australian Open semi-final, and Alcaraz easing home in straight sets at Wimbledon.
Five other players have already qualified for the ATP Finals, which begin on Sunday: Sinner, Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev, Daniil Medvedev and Taylor Fritz.
Djokovic himself has enjoyed an extraordinary sequence of appearances at the Finals, where he has won a record seven titles and missed only one previous instalment since 2008. That was in 2017, when his largely injury-free career was blighted by an elbow problem which required surgery the following season.
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