{"id":33245,"date":"2019-11-17T20:56:18","date_gmt":"2019-11-17T20:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=33245"},"modified":"2019-11-17T20:56:18","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T20:56:18","slug":"tsitsipas-beats-thiem-at-o2-arena-to-become-atp-finals-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/tsitsipas-beats-thiem-at-o2-arena-to-become-atp-finals-champion\/","title":{"rendered":"Tsitsipas beats Thiem at O2 Arena to become ATP Finals champion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Stefanos Tsitsipas beat Dominic Thiem 6-7 (6-8), 6-2, 7-6 (7-4) to become the youngest ever champion at the ATP Tour Finals in London.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thiem won the first set on a close tie-break, and was first to serve in the second. But 21 year-old Tsitsipas saw an opportunity and took it as he broke serve. The Greek then gained momentum, holding serve and breaking Thiem again, before serving for the set at 5-2 and leveling the match.<\/p>\n<p>A long opening game in the deciding third set saw Thiem hold on, before Tsitsipas fired through his own service game and broke the Austrian straight after.<\/p>\n<p>But Thiem broke back to level the score at 3-3, and both players stayed on serve to reach the tiebreak that saw Tsitsipas clinch the title.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/B4-wXxhhWuU\/<\/p>\n<p>Both players had never reached the final before, this year marking Tsitsipas\u2019 debut at the tournament, who is also the youngest finalist since 2009.<\/p>\n<p>The Greek <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/tennis\/50446609\">saw off Roger Federer in the semi-final<\/a>, while Thiem made it passed last year\u2019s champion Alexander Zverev to make it to his first final at the O2 Arena.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/B47s4dRh95V\/<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/B48SnxnB9nQ\/<\/p>\n<p>Rafael Nadal ends the season as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atptour.com\/en\/rankings\/singles\">world number one<\/a> despite failing to reach the last four, making him the oldest player to do so aged 33.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/B45fWyMhGkN\/<\/p>\n<p>This year also marked the penultimate time the season-ending tournament will be staged in London, as it was announced earlier in the year that it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/tennis\/48036923\">will move to the Pala Alpitour stadium<\/a> in Turin, Italy after 12 years in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>But despite the tournament marking the end of the tennis season, the action isn\u2019t over yet, with the Davis Cup finals taking place in Madrid next week.<\/p>\n<p>Six groups of three teams will compete in a round-robin, before the winners in each group and two second-place teams battle it out in the knockout stages, with the final on Sunday 24th November.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/B418CG7g-W7\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.daviscup.com\/en\/news\/313266.aspx\">Great Britain\u2019s team<\/a>, captained by Leon Smith, includes former world number one Andy Murray after he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/tennis\/50117953\">won his first title in over two years<\/a> in October. Dan Evans and Kyle Edmund were also named, alongside double\u2019s partners Jamie Murray and Neal Skupski.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Words: Alysia Georgiades\u00a0| Featured image: Photo by Claus Gr\u00fcnst\u00e4udl on Unsplash<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stefanos Tsitsipas beat Dominic Thiem 6-7 (6-8), 6-2, 7-6 (7-4) to become the youngest ever champion at the ATP Tour Finals in London. Thiem won the first set on a close tie-break, and was first&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":33247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,124],"tags":[613,1741,2386,3769,4578,6130,6538],"class_list":["post-33245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","category-tennis","tag-atp-finals","tag-davis-cup","tag-final","tag-london","tag-o2-arena","tag-tennis","tag-uk"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}