Is anyone arriving at the Rolex Shanghai Masters in better form than Jannik Sinner?

The Italian arrives at the ATP Masters 1000 fresh from notching back-to-back victories against Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev to claim his third title of the season in Beijing. Beating the top two seeds in the Shanghai draw so recently has left the Italian’s confidence sky-high, particularly his maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head triumph, at the seventh attempt, against Medvedev.

“I’m always looking for the very tough challenges and I’m very happy that I had the chance to play against him again,” said Sinner on Friday of his Medvedev win. “Obviously finals are a little bit different, but for me it is always a huge pleasure when I get the chance to play against the best players in the world.

“I lost many times against him. I changed a couple of things, tactical things, which were working very well at some points, but this is all part of the process and the practice sessions we have done. We try to analyse a couple of things after the match and make the same things happen in practice. This is part of the work we are putting in and you have to show this in a match.”

In contrast to his rivalry with Medvedev, Sinner now leads Alcaraz 4-3 in the pair’s Lexus ATP Head2Head series. He is one of the few players on Tour who has regularly caused problems to the Spaniard during his meteoric rise.

“Every time when I play against him, I feel like we both try and push ourselves to the limit,” said Sinner. “Both of us obviously hate losing, especially against each other. We have a very good relationship off court. I feel like we are good friends, but still on court you feel a little bit nervous because you want to win. You hate losing.

“We both are very young, and we also feel like when we play, many people are watching. It’s a mix of everything and it’s obviously a huge pleasure to share the court with him. In this way, I always try to look forward to these matches. I feel when I play against the best players in the world I can really see where to improve, and that is basically my main goal.”

Sinner will hope his focused approach continues to pay off on Saturday when he meets Marcos Giron on his Shanghai debut. Despite his recent successes, which also include lifting his maiden Masters 1000 crown in August in Toronto, the Italian reiterated his commitment to improving in every way he can.

“It’s not about when you win one big title that things are going to change dramatically, especially the mindset,” said Sinner. “I felt at the US Open I should have done a couple of things better. I practised a lot with my team, especially on the mental side and trying to understand my brain a little bit better. I recognised that I made a couple of mistakes and I tried to improve. I feel like the things I showed in Beijing last week were an improvement.”

As well as vying to eclipse his rivals for Masters 1000 glory, one of Sinner’s goals in Shanghai will be to boost his chances of joining Alcaraz, Medvedev and Novak Djokovic in booking a berth at the Nitto ATP Finals. The 22-year-old is in fourth in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin as he attempts to qualify directly for the prestigious season finale for the first time.

It may have been a long four years since the previous edition of the Rolex Shanghai Masters, but Daniil Medvedev retains strong memories of his successful 2019 campaign in China.

Medvedev overcame Alexander Zverev in the championship match that year to cap a stellar run on hard courts during which he lifted his first two ATP Masters 1000 crowns (Cincinnati, Shanghai) and reached his maiden Grand Slam final at the US Open. The 27-year-old believes his Shanghai triumph was crucial in proving his spurt of success was no flash in the pan.

“This title is really strong in my memory,” said Medvedev on Friday as he prepares to defend his 2019 crown in Shanghai. “I managed to go on a run of reaching six finals in a row. Three of them were Masters 1000s and one was a Grand Slam. At the time it was huge for me. I probably didn’t expect and didn’t think I would be able to do something like this.

“[Shanghai] was the tournament, after this great US summer, where everyone was asking, and I was asking myself: ‘Am I really capable of going again and playing good and winning the title maybe?’ I managed to do it. I loved the tournament and loved the city, so it really gave me a lot of confidence for the future also.”

Medvedev has notched a Tour-leading 42 wins on hard courts in 2023 and has lifted four of his five ATP Tour crowns this season on the surface. Despite defeat to Jannik Sinner in Wednesday’s final at the China Open in Beijing, he is delighted with the consistency of his displays on his favoured surface.

“Probably only the Australian Open, Toronto and Cincinnati were not the best [for me this year],” said Medvedev. “At the same time, that’s how the Tour is. I lost against strong players in tough battles. Other than that, probably all other tournaments on hard courts I played great. Hopefully I can finish [the year] on the same note.”

Having already qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals for the fifth consecutive year, Medvedev is feeling relaxed as the Tour enters a part of the season in which he has historically performed well. Medvedev has won six of his 20 tour-level crowns at post-US Open events on the ATP Tour calendar, and is happy with how his body is holding up having played 72 matches so far in 2023.

“It’s never easy, but at the same time sometimes the better you play, the more confidence you have and the more you can still go for it more and more,” said Medvedev, who will hope to improve his 59-13 record when he takes on Cristian Garin in his Shanghai opener. “Right now I’m feeling good, I’m playing good and enjoying being back in China. I’m happy to try to continue this way here in Shanghai.”

Casper Ruud’s long wait for his Rolex Shanghai Masters debut did not disappoint.

The eighth seed powered to a 7-5, 6-0 triumph against Yoshihito Nishioka on Friday at the Chinese ATP Masters 1000 event. The Norwegian let slip an early 4-1 lead on the Qizhong Tennis Center’s Stadium Court but quashed Nishioka’s comeback in style by winning eight straight games from 5-5 for a 75-minute second-round win.

“I’m very happy of course,” said Ruud. “Yoshihito came back in a tough, long first set. These things can happen. Whoever wins a first set like this will feel motivated to keep going in the second.

“I know the feeling myself. You feel like you worked hard for an hour just to lose the set and it feels like you have to climb a mountain to turn the match around. Maybe that’s what happened. I got a great start in the second and I just kept it going.”

A Shanghai debut to remember 🌟@CasperRuud98 flies into the third round, defeating Yoshihito Nishioka 7-5, 6-0.#RolexShanghaiMasters | @SH_RolexMasters pic.twitter.com/bmA7aoHBWE

— ATP Tour (@atptour) October 6, 2023

Ruud is attempting to complete the set of fourth-round appearances at all nine ATP Masters 1000 events as the ATP Tour returns to Shanghai for the first time since 2019. A deep run will also boost the Norwegian’s Nitto ATP Finals qualification hopes. The 24-year-old, a finalist at the prestigious season finale last year, is currently 10th in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin.

His next opponent in Shanghai will be Christopher Eubanks. The 29th-seeded American was in early trouble on Friday, but he rallied to a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 triumph against Yannick Hanfmann.

Another Turin hopeful, Holger Rune, could not join Ruud in the third round. Brandon Nakashima powered to a 6-0, 6-2 triumph against Denmark’s Rune, converting five of his 14 break points in a scintillating display.

It was a maiden Top 10 victory for Nakashima, who has struggled to find his best level this year after lifting the trophy at the 2022 Next Gen ATP Finals. It was just the third time this season he has sealed consecutive tour-level wins, and the American will hope to make it three in a row in Shanghai when he next faces Tomas Martin Etcheverry or home favourite Zhang Zhizhen.

Rune’s defeat is a blow for 20-year-old as he looks to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals for the first time. He remains eighth in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin but has now won just one of seven matches since reaching the quarter-finals at Wimbledon in July.

Three other seeded players joined Rune in exiting the Shanghai draw after early defeats on Friday. Fabian Marozsan, the 23-year-old Hungarian who upset Carlos Alcaraz in May in Rome, downed 11th seed Alex de Minaur 6-3, 7-5. The World No. 91 outhit De Minaur by 28 winners to 15 for an 85-minute triumph.

Marozsan, who claimed his first hard-court Masters 1000 win in the first round against Arthur Rinderknech, will take on Dusan Lajovic next. The Serbian led 6-4, 3-2 when his 23rd-seeded opponent Tallon Griekspoor retired from their second-round clash.

Lorenzo Musetti also fell to a second-round defeat. Hsu Yu Hsiou, the qualifier from Chinese Taipei, eased to a 6-3, 6-4 victory against the 11th seed to book a third-round clash with Hubert Hurkacz, who beat Thanasi Kokkinakis 7-6(5), 6-4. Hsu had not competed at a Masters 1000 event prior to this week in Shanghai.

A native of Buenos Aires, Camilo Ugo Carabelli grew up doing what many young Argentine boys enjoy: playing football. At age seven, Ugo Carabelli would finish football practice and then ride alongside his mother to pick up his brother, Jeremias, from the tennis courts.

When Jeremias invited Camilo to try tennis, they both were met with surprise.

“My brother said, ‘Come hit with me,’” Camilo recalled to ATPTour.com. “The first time I hit the ball, it was perfect and he said, ‘Whoa, I think you can play tennis better than football,’ because me and football are very bad.”

Despite being a natural from the start, it was not until a decade later, when Ugo Carabelli was 17, that he had pro tennis aspirations. The Argentine wanted to enjoy being with family and friends while also focussing on school as a teenager. Those values still live with Ugo Carabelli, who is taking classes at the University of Palermo and has each of his family member’s names [Gustavo Ugo, Maria Marta and Jeremias] and their dates of birth tattooed on his body.

“I really like tattoos. I got my first tattoo, my mom’s name, when I was 15,” said Ugo Carabelli, who has 20 tattoos. “I think I will finish my arm tattoo and then start on my leg, but not for two years I think.”

Camilo Ugo Carabelli wins the Challenger 100 event in Antofagasta, Chile.” />
^{Camilo Ugo Carabelli at the Antofagasta Challenger. Credit: Challenger Dove Men+Care Antofagasta}
Ugo Carabelli’s latest mark came on the ATP Challenger Tour two weeks ago, when he triumphed at the Challenger Dove Men+Care Antofagasta in Chile, claiming his fourth title at that level and first since August 2022. Returning to the winners’ circle was a welcome sight for Ugo Carabelli, who dealt with a hip injury earlier this season.

“It was very important because this year I’ve had many injuries, first in my hip,” he said. “After Roland Garros, I did not play for two or three months. I haven’t played too much this year, so winning a Challenger is very special for me.”

Now coached by former World No. 37 Carlos Berlocq, Ugo Carabelli and his team did not know the root cause of the hip injury that kept him away from competition, only growing the frustration for the 24-year-old, who cracked the Top 100 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings last August.

“One day, I’m good. Then I would wake up another day and I’m very bad, I can’t walk, I can’t hit the ball,” he said. “Me and my team, we didn’t understand anything like, ‘Where is the problem?’”

Since returning to action, Ugo Carabelli has made two Challenger finals, including his title run in Antofagasta, and is now aiming for another deep run at this week’s Campeonato Internacional de Tênis in Brazil, where he is seeded eighth.

Camilo Ugo Carabelli wins the 2023 Challenger Dove Men+Care Antofagasta.” />
^{Credit: Challenger Dove Men+Care Antofagasta}

One of the latest INSIGHTS metrics, Serve Effectiveness takes a holistic look at player serves by simply measuring how often the shot earns a player an advantage in points.

Expressed as a percentage, the metric includes aces, service winners, unreturned serves and points in which a player is In Attack on the first ball after the serve.

By combining all of these statistics into one measure, we can achieve a fuller understanding of a player’s serving prowess — stripping away unrelated factors like performance in ensuing rallies, which is implicitly factored into basic statistics like service points won.

Like all INSIGHTS, a player’s Serve Effectiveness data can be compared to his season average and the ATP Tour average to better understand how much of a relative strength (or weakness) his serve is.

Out of the initial 32 seeds for this year’s Wimbledon (prior to withdrawals), three players broke the 70 per cent mark by this metric on first serve over the previous 52 weeks: Nick Kyrgios, Hubert Hurkacz and Felix Auger-Aliassime.

#ServeEffectiveness shows the % of points where the serve creates an advantage for the player pic.twitter.com/Ql16De4GqN

— Tennis Insights (@tennis_insights) July 2, 2023

Ben Shelton is also among the leaders with a 67.5 Serve Effectiveness rate on first serve and a 33.3 % rate on second serve, based on statistics compiled during his US Open semi-final run.

The ATP Tour average Serve Effectiveness rate on first serve is 58 per cent, broken down as follows: aces (16%), unreturned (22%), attacking first ball (20%). That leaves 38 per cent for a neutral rally state on the server’s first ball, three per cent for defence on the first ball, and one per cent for return winners. The average Serve Effectiveness on second serve is 23 per cent.

Looking forward to seeing how this🚀 will develop over the next few years & seeing what level the #ServeEffectiveness can reach📈@BenShelton is already well above the Tour Avg. for both 1st & 2nd serve. His highest single match 1st #ServeEffectiveness performance this year has… pic.twitter.com/0r1B5TOOwM

— Tennis Insights (@tennis_insights) September 7, 2023

Carlos Alcaraz arrives at the Rolex Shanghai Masters with Novak Djokovic and World No. 1 on his mind.

The Spaniard is chasing a second consecutive ATP Year-End No. 1 presented by Pepperstone finish and trails the Serbian by 580 points in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin. The 20-year-old would leapfrog Djokovic and move into top spot if he reaches the final in Shanghai.

“I think [about Djokovic] almost in every practice, I am not going to lie,” Alcaraz said when asked about catching the 36-year-old. “I train with a goal. I go to the tournaments with a goal. To try to end the year as No. 1. Novak Djokovic is on my mind in almost every practice. I have to practise my best. I have to go for 100 per cent in every ball to be able to catch him.

“He is 100 per cent focused. I watch his practice, his movement and the way he plays and trains and it is something I want. He puts 100 per cent in every practice and game and it is something I am trying in my game.”

Alcaraz, who has lifted six trophies in 2023, is making his debut in Shanghai, having advanced to the semi-finals in Beijing. The top seed is the only player to have earned more than 60 tour-level wins this season, advancing to at least the semi-finals in 12 of the 14 events he has played.

Ahead of his opening match against Gregoire Barrere, Alcaraz discussed the mental challenges of competing at the top level.

“I always say that mentally is the toughest part to practise but at the same time it is the most important thing if you want to be the best in tennis,” Alcaraz said. “I am trying to work in every practice and tournament and learn from the things I was not doing great… I want to be the best so I need to have this mentality to be strong enough to play at the same level and not have ups and downs.”

Alcaraz lost in the semi-finals in Beijing against 22-year-old Jannik Sinner, who went on to win the trophy at the ATP 500. Sinner now leads Alcaraz 4-3 in the pair’s Lexus ATP Head2Head series and it is a rivalry the Spaniard is relishing.

“We have a good rivalry,” Alcaraz said. “I am a guy who doesn’t want to lose in any match. Against him it is different. I feel a difference. Every time I beat him or lose against him is different. I learn something from every match I play against him.

“It would be great if [the rivalry] was like Rafa and Roger. It would be the dream. For ourselves and the tennis fans.”

#NextGenATP Serbian Hamad Medjedovic has jumped one place to eighth in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Jeddah following a standout run at the Astana Open.

The 20-year-old is aiming to make his debut at the Next Gen ATP Finals and boosted his chances by advancing to his second tour-level semi-final at the ATP 250 hard-court event. Medjedovic defeated Laslo Djere, Alexander Shevchenko and Jiri Lehecka before eventually falling to Sebastian Korda.

Earlier this season the Serbian reached the last four in Gstaad. He has also lifted three ATP Challenger Tour trophies.

Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Jeddah

Frenchman Terence Atmane has also climbed, jumping one place to 12th in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Jeddah after advancing through qualifying at the Rolex Shanghai Masters to reach the first round.

Atmane’s countrymen Arthur Fils and Luca Van Assche will also aim to increase their qualification chances when they compete in Shanghai. Fils, 19, defeated Pavel Kotov to reach the second round on Thursday.

The Next Gen ATP Finals will be held from 28 November-2 December in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.