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Carlos Alcaraz settled in quickly to his maiden Rolex Shanghai Masters campaign on Saturday, when the top seed overcame a spirited Gregoire Barrere 6-2, 7-5 at the ATP Masters 1000 event.

Alcaraz stayed the more consistent at key moments to claim a one-hour, 42-minute triumph against the World No. 73. He made a lightning-fast start inside Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena, where he raced to a 4-0 lead early and ultimately saved six of seven break points he faced to improve to 15-0 in opening matches this season.

Barrere competed well in his maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting with Alcaraz, particularly from the baseline where he regularly matched Alcaraz’s power and precision with his groundstrokes. He struggled with his serve throughout the match, however, making just 53 per cent (42/79) of first deliveries. That tally undermined his bid for a first Top 10 win as Alcaraz maintained constant pressure in return games.

Now 62-8 for the season, Alcaraz will take on 30th seed Daniel Evans or qualifier Mikhail Kukushkin in the third round as he chases his third Masters 1000 crown of the year. The Spaniard is also attempting to leapfrog Novak Djokovic into first place in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin by reaching the final in Shanghai.

More to follow…

Jannik Sinner is the fourth player to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals, joining Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev at the season finale, which will be played in Turin from 12-19 November.

The Italian earned his place after defeating Marcos Giron in the second round of the Rolex Shanghai Masters. He has qualified for the year-end championships for the first time after competing at the Pala Alpitour as an alternate in 2021 when countryman Matteo Berrettini withdrew due to injury.

Sinner has enjoyed a season of breakthroughs in 2023. The Italian advanced to his first major semi-final at Wimbledon and lifted his maiden ATP Masters 1000 trophy in Toronto.

Also a champion this year in Beijing and Montpellier, Sinner made several deep runs throughout the season. He reached the final at the Masters 1000 event in Miami, where he upset Carlos Alcaraz in a semi-final widely viewed as one of the best matches of the year. Sinner also made the final in Rotterdam and reached the semi-finals at Indian Wells and Monte-Carlo.

The 22-year-old is in top form as evidenced by his performance in Beijing, where he defeated Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev in back-to-back straight-sets matches to claim the trophy. 

Saturday’s play at the Rolex Shanghai Masters has been disrupted after persistent rain forced matches on outside courts to be suspended at the ATP Masters 1000 event.

After a couple of short stoppages earlier in the day, play was halted just after 4 p.m. local time in China, with no restart currently scheduled before 6 p.m. The action continues under the retractable roof of the Qizhong Tennis Center’s Stadium Court, where Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas have already claimed second-round victories. Jannik Sinner, champion in Beijing earlier this week, is currently in action against Marcos Giron.

Matches involving seeded players Frances Tiafoe, Cameron Norrie and Ugo Humbert are all currently suspended. Norrie leads J.J. Wolf 3-6, 7-5, 3-2 with a break in the third set, while Tiafoe trails Lorenzo Sonego 6-2, 2-6, 1-2 with the pair on serve in the decider. Humbert and Botic van de Zandschulp are level at 2-2 in the opening set of their second-round clash.

[NEWSLETTER FORM]

Daniil Medvedev picked up where he left off Saturday at the Rolex Shanghai Masters.

Stepping onto the Qizhong Tennis Center’s Stadium Court for the first time since his 2019 title run, Medvedev ground down Cristian Garin for a 6-3, 6-3 win to kick-start his campaign at the ATP Masters 1000 event. A display packed with trademark defensive nous and a refusal to miss proved too much for Garin as the second seed comfortably advanced having converted five of nine break points he earned.

.@DaniilMedwed will not be denied ?‍♂️#RolexShanghaiMasters | @SH_RolexMasters pic.twitter.com/vvkSBEL07b

With his 92-minute victory, Medvedev became the second player to notch 60 tour-level wins this season after Carlos Alcaraz. It is the second time he has achieved the feat in his career, after he finished the 2021 season with 63 wins. The 27-year-old Medvedev also owns a Tour-leading 43 victories on hard courts this season.

“I hope so, you never know,” said Medvedev, when asked if he was confident of passing his record of 63 wins. “At this moment and with the form I’m in, I would confidently say I will do it, but never say things too early in tennis.

One of the newest INSIGHTS metrics, Shot Variety, provides an objective measure for how much a player mixes up their tactics and shot selection during match play.

Expressed as a percentage of all shots hit, Shot Variety is calculated by comparing the use of "core" shots — topspin groundstrokes hit through the opponent's baseline — with the use of variation. This variation can include deep or short slices, drop shots, topspin angles and shots at net.

The metric provides a useful tool to help demonstrate how a player's tactics compare to the rest of the ATP Tour. When viewed for a particular match, Shot Variety can also show how a player's shot selection compares to his own benchmarks from previous matches.

[ATP APP]

Out of players inside the Top 100 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, Daniel Evans and Alexander Bublik are the co-leaders in Shot Variety over the past 52 weeks, with both players hitting roughly 47 per cent of their shots with variation. For Evans, his 46.8 per cent score breaks down as follows: slices (25.1%), short slices (7.1%), drop shots (1.2%), angles (2.1%), net shots (11.3%).

Former World No. 99 Pedro Sousa put a bow on his professional career Thursday at the Del Monte Lisboa Belém Open in Portugal.

The host site of the ATP Challenger Tour 75 event, the Club Internacional de Foot-Ball is Sousa’s home club, making the 35-year-old’s final tournament a memorable goodbye.

“The hardest part is long gone, it was when I had to make the decision. It seemed like this day would never come, but suddenly it was here,” Sousa said in Portuguese at a press conference in Lisbon. “Before the match I was okay, but then that pressure came. Playing here is always special. I had friends, family and club members that I see daily, which gave me extra strength to perform well.”

[ATP APP]

Sousa, who turned pro in 2007, collected eight ATP Challenger Tour titles and is one of four Portuguese men to crack the Top 100 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings in the past decade.

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.

Unseeded Austrians Alexander Erler and Lucas Miedler defeated French singles stars Ugo Humbert and Adrian Mannarino 6-2, 6-2 to make a winning start to their Rolex Shanghai Masters campaign on Friday.

Erler/Miedler were a perfect six-for-six on break chances in the 57-minute match, while saving two of the four break points against them. The Austrians won more than 50 per cent of their return points against both first and second serve.

Erler/Miedler are in 15th place in the Pepperstone ATP Live Doubles Teams Rankings but could make up significant ground on the top eight with a deep run in Shanghai.

[ATP APP]

Fifth-seeded Argentines Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni — comfortably inside the top eight at fourth place in their quest to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin — also notched an opening win on Friday with a 6-4,  6-4 result against Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski.

The Rolex Shanghai Masters celebrated 25 years of professional tennis in the Chinese city on Friday.

The Shanghai event has operated as an ATP Masters 1000 since 2009, and was awarded ATP Masters 1000 Tournament of the Year, as voted by players, in each of its first five years with that status. The Nitto ATP Finals, then known as the Tennis Masters Cup, was also held in Shanghai in 2002 and from 2005-08.

The lone Masters 1000 in Asia, Shanghai regularly attracts the biggest names on the ATP Tour, with stars like Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic all former champions at the state-of-the-art Qi Zhong Tennis Center.

[ATP APP]

Special guests at Friday's ceremony included ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi; Charles Humphrey Smith, an ATP Tournament Advisory Council member and the Rolex Shanghai Masters managing director; and Rolex Shanghai Masters tournament director Michael Luevano.

Zhang Zhizhen added another historic achievement to his groundbreaking year on the ATP Tour on Friday at the Rolex Shanghai Masters.

The World No. 60 defeated Tomas Martin Etcheverry 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 to become the first home favourite to reach the third round at the ATP Masters 1000 event. Zhang edged the 28th-seeded Argentine in a gripping two-hour, 28-minute encounter played out amid a raucous atmosphere inside the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena.

“First set I was down, and he had a break,” said Zhang after the match. “I told myself, second set I still have a chance. I just tried to hold my service games and see if I could break him. First set my return was not working well, so I changed my position a bit and I’m happy to win the match of course.”

History made ? ?

From a set down Zhang defeats Etcheverry to become the first Chinese man to reach the third round at the Shanghai Masters!@SH_RolexMasters | #RolexShanghaiMasters pic.twitter.com/hPQ4jP624W

Zhang clinched a crucial break in the ninth game of the deciding set and then held his nerve to convert his third match point in a final game featuring a series of bruising baseline exchanges. He outhit Etcheverry by 32 winners to 30 to seal his eighth Top 50 win of the season.

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.

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.

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

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.”

[ATP APP]

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.

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.

#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.

As the Asian Swing continues, Jannik Sinner boosted his chances of qualifying for the Nitto ATP Finals by winning the title at the China Open.

This week, the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin will heat up further at the Rolex Shanghai Masters. There are 845 points separating fifth-placed Andrey Rublev and ninth-placed Taylor Fritz.

ATPTour.com looks at players in contention for the season finale.

Fourth - Jannik Sinner
The Italian consolidated his fourth-placed position in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin after winning his third tour-level trophy of the season at the China Open in Beijing. The 22-year-old, who is aiming to qualify for the prestigious year-end event for the first time, defeated Daniil Medvedev in the title match. Medvedev has already qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals.

[ATP APP]

How to make a splash in Shanghai.

Arthur Fils wasted little time showing Chinese fans why he is one of the ATP Tour’s most highly rated talents on Thursday at the Rolex Shanghai Masters, where the 19-year-old breezed past Pavel Kotov 6-1, 6-4 in just 78 minutes on Stadium Court.

The Frenchman delivered a dazzling display of shotmaking to notch his second main-draw ATP Masters 1000 win. He outhit Kotov by 25 winners to nine in a confident performance which also showcased his expert all-court movement.

“[I’m delighted] because I played against a great opponent," said Fils. "I’ve known him a long time, he plays great. I was pretty happy with my first set, and my second set was good also. He played some great points and great games so he came back a little bit, but at the end I finished the match in a good position, so I’m really happy about it.”

It's all in the name ??

Arthur Fils x @Gael_Monfils
#RolexShanghaiMasters | @SH_RolexMasters pic.twitter.com/aXIInm0hld

Robert Davis is the author of Elements of Coaching Professional Tennis, available on Amazon.

From shouts of "Vamos", to endless drop shots and topspin lobs, there is no denying the Carlos Alcaraz effect on tennis in China. The country with a population of 1.4 billion is in the midst of a tennis explosion with courts, competitions and coaches popping up all over the nation. While Alcaraz may be the most popular player, credit must be given to China’s frontline stars Wu Yibing, Zhang Zhizhen and Shang Juncheng for getting men’s tennis on the big screen.

Nowadays Chinese players shuttle between Beijing and Bradenton, Shanghai and Spain, like morning commuter stops. It is not just the foreign academies that are cashing in on the tennis boom, but the entire Chinese tennis industry; racquets, balls and apparel are flying off the shelves. And the only pickleballs you will find in China come in a jar.

It was not always so. Back in 1993, Australia’s Desmond Tyson landed in China on a goodwill mission between the Chinese and Australian governments. Tyson was tasked with assisting the national tennis team with training camps and coach education workshops. 

“It was definitely interesting,” remembers Tyson of the early days. “On one end, they had some pretty good players already, and on the other end, they were still stringing racquets with fishing line. But it was very obvious that they were keen to get better.”

The legacy of Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah goes far beyond their results on court; the 345 doubles matches they won together on the ATP Tour, their 19 titles —including two Grand Slams— and becoming the World’s No. 1 duo in 2019. The biggest impact the Colombians have had was their commitment to working together in a discipline in which long partnerships are rare.

“The first time I met Sebas, we were five years old. We started playing in the same city. We grew up together and ended up experiencing a lot of things together,” explained Farah. “The only others with a similar backstory are the Bryan brothers. The difference being that we formed a brotherhood along the way and, thanks to hard work, a lack of ego between us, and not arguing over minutiae, we managed to have a successful partnership.”

It is a miracle that they ever crossed paths in the first place. Robert was born in Montreal, Canada, where his parents Patrick and Eva had settled after fleeing the Lebanese civil war. The fact that the Farah Makssoud family ended up in Cali, Colombia, was mainly due to a holiday they took in the late eighties. They ended up staying there, Patrick as a tennis coach and Eva as a teacher.

[ATP APP]

It was in Cali where destiny brought Robert and Juan Sebastian together. They met at a local tournament for under-eights. They played on adjoining courts in the first round and both of them beat older players. “That’s when I realised the potential they both had,” remembers Patrick, who would eventually become coach to the two of them.