Seven-times ATP Finals champion Novak Djokovic has withdrawn from the season-ending tournament due to a shoulder injury, hours after winning his 101st title at the Hellenic Championship.<\/p>\n
Finalist Lorenzo Musetti will take his place in Turin, where the ATP Finals begin on Sunday, after Djokovic took almost three hours to beat the Italian 4-6 6-3 7-5.
\n“I was really looking forward to competing in Turin and giving my best,” Djokovic posted on social media.<\/p>\n
“But after today’s final in Athens, I’m sad to share that I need to withdraw due to an ongoing injury.”<\/p>\n
Djokovic also missed last year’s season-ender with injury, having won his seventh title in 2023.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old said he had been dealing with the injury throughout the tournament in Athens.<\/p>\n
“That’s the reason why I decided not to make a call would I go to Turin or not earlier because I wanted to see how the matches go, how I react,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
“After yesterday’s match, I was hoping that it was not going to flare up. But then today, even before the match, it was not great. I had to take all the strong medications to be able to play the match.<\/p>\n
“I felt there’s no chance for me to go through the entire tournament in Turin with the required level of tennis when you’re playing the best eight in the world.”<\/p>\n
Musetti, who needed to beat Djokovic to overtake Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime to qualify for the tournament, will replace Djokovic in the Jimmy Connors Group, with Alexander Bublik now the first alternate.<\/p>\n
This marks the first time that two Italian singles players have qualified for the same edition of the ATP Finals, and is Musetti’s first appearance.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14875,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-14874","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Djokovic missed last year's season-ender with injury, having won his seventh title in 2023.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Djokovic missed last year's season-ender with injury, having won his seventh title in 2023.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19347,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14874\/revisions\/19347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=14874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}