Stefanos Tsitsipas finally beats Daniil Medvedev to make winning start at maiden ATP Finals

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Joe Krishnan11 November 2019

Stefanos Tsitsipas finally ended his winless run against Daniil Medvedev with a straight-sets victory at the ATP Finals.

The 21-year-old edged a first-set tiebreak before taking control of the second set to win 7-6, 6-4 in an hour and 45 minutes.

Medvedev had the clear psychological advantage going into this clash, having won all five of his previous meetings with Tsitsipas.

But with both players making their debuts at the tournament, it added some unpredictability to proceedings.

The first set was something like a game of cat and mouse, with neither player pushing too hard to go for the break and simply holding their serve as it inevitably headed towards a tiebreak at 6-6.

There was nothing between them beforehand, but Tsitsipas had been the more aggressive throughout and the young Greek took things up a notch, racing into a 4-2 lead.

Medvedev fought back, but the Russian seemed to lose his composure - and also his footing - as he sunk a forehand into the net to hand Tsitsipas the first set after 54 minutes of absorbing tennis.

It was just as even in the second set, with Medvedev keeping his head in front - with serve - while Tsitsipas was maintaining an astonishingly high accuracy on his first serve, with 90 per cent of his first serve points won.

Finally, after 20 consecutive service holds, Tsitsipas made the breakthrough at 4-4, capitalising on a catalogue of errors from the usually reliable Medvedev, who was venting towards his coaching team, to break with the chance of serving out the match.

And the Greek continued his perfect run of serving and not facing a break point, smashing home from the net. Medvedev failed to return and the crowd cheered with delight.

Tsitsipas had finally broken the curse against Medvedev and can look forward to taking on the mighty Rafael Nadal later in the group.

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