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Struff beats Djokovic in Basel as ATP Finals race tightens

Nikhil RaoPublished 5m ago3 min readBased on 7 sources
Struff beats Djokovic in Basel as ATP Finals race tightens
Photo by Kuberzog / CC BY 4.0

Jan-Lennard Struff beat Novak Djokovic 6-7(4), 7-5, 7-6(5) at the Swiss Indoors in Basel on Thursday, ending the 39-year-old's run at the tournament. The match lasted two hours and 36 minutes. Struff, ranked world No. 27, has now beaten Djokovic for the first time in nine meetings.

The first set was decided by a tiebreak, a sudden-death game played when a set reaches 6-6. Djokovic won it 7-4. Struff then took the second set 7-5, and the third went to another tiebreak. Struff won that one 7-5 to finish the match.

Djokovic had beaten Frenchman Ugo Humbert 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 on Wednesday. It was his first appearance at the Swiss Indoors in 15 years. Struff reached this second-round match, which is the round of 16, by beating Yannick Hanfmann 6-4, 6-3.

The loss matters for the rankings. The top eight players over the season qualify for the ATP Finals, the season-ending event in Turin, Italy, which runs from 15 to 22 November. Alexander Zverev, Carlos Alcaraz and Ben Shelton have already secured places. World No. 1 Jannik Sinner will not play because of injury.

After Thursday, Djokovic sits 11th in the qualifying race. Rafael Jodar holds the final place, ninth, and Djokovic is 319 points behind him. Points are the currency of the rankings, and a player earns them by winning matches and going deep in tournaments. Djokovic has the Paris Masters in November to try to close the gap.

Basel also had an upset at the top of the draw. Top seed Ben Shelton lost to Swiss wildcard Jerome Kym. A wildcard is a place handed out by the tournament organisers, and Kym was ranked 222nd in the world when he won.

Djokovic's record is still enormous. He has won 24 Grand Slam titles, the men's record, and 102 tour-level titles overall. He has also won the ATP Finals a record seven times. He missed the last two editions with injury.

A 19th appearance at the ATP Finals would move him ahead of Roger Federer, who has 18. That is the next target, and it depends on the points still to be played.

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