Key events
Preamble
Evening all and welcome to the ATP Tour finals – day 1! Already today, we’ve enjoyed Jannik Sinner – this blog’s outsider for this title – deal with Stefanos Tsitsipas, and now we’re about to see Holger Rune have a hack at Novak Djokovic.
Rune is, of course, a terrific player and prospect, but perhaps his biggest strength is his unshakeable certainty that he’s the greatest player of all time – a sense that’s unlikely to have been diluted by the appointment of Boris Becker as his coach. So he won’t be fazed by facing the second greatest ever – who needed three sets to beat him in Paris last week – and if Rune’s power-game is working, this will be a really fun match.
Djokovic, though, is, well, Djokovic; how else to describe a unique freak of nature totally unlike anything else ever seen in any sport? Most likely, he repels whatever Rune has to offer, deals with the rest of the field in short order, and ends a three-Slam season by defending this title before chuckling at the mind-boggling extent of his brilliance and humility. But don’t write off Rune: he believes he can do this and if Djokovic isn’t bang at it – yes, yes, I know – he’s a good chance of making something happen.
Play: 9pm local, 8pm GMT
