Sinner in the round of 16 after a work victory in Shanghai

South Tyrol's tennis ace Jannik Sinner had a tough nut to crack at the Shanghai Masters on Sunday. The Argentinian Sebastián Báez took a set from Sinner - but in the end the world number 4 still celebrated.

08 October 2023

From: zor

The 1st set started with a break for both games, both Báez and Sinner failed to complete their first service game. The Sesto player in particular lacked fine-tuning of the serve at the beginning and so the Beijing winner immediately received another break to make it 1:1. As the game continued, Báez found his way into the game more and more and increased the lead to 3:1, and in the end he won 4:3. It was the first set loss for Sinner since the quarter-finals in Beijing against Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov.

In the second set, Sinner was “awake”, the world number 2 circled several aces around his opponent’s ears and raced to 4-3. When the score was 0-5, Sinner served to win the set and equalized 3-6.

So the match went into the decisive 3rd set, the two 22-year-olds looked confident, but Sinner took the Argentinian's serve and increased it to 3-1 after the break - a preliminary decision. With another break to make it 5:2, Sinner made everything clear and celebrated a classic victory after around 2 hours with 3:6, 6:3 and 6:2.

Sinner will contest the round of 16 on Tuesday, his opponent is Ben Shelton (USA), who previously knocked the Russian Roman Safiullin out of the tournament.

Final score:
Jannik Sinner (ITA/Sexten) – Sebastián Báez (ARG) 3:6, 6:3, 6:2