Sinner reaches first grass final in Halle

pAfter notching three consecutive three-set wins to begin his a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/halle/500/overview'Terra Wortmann Open/a campaign, a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/jannik-sinner/s0ag/overview'Jannik Sinner/a finished the job in straight sets on Saturday. Still, he was made to work for his 6-4, 7-6(3) semi-final victory against Zhang Zhizhen./p

pThe result saw Sinner through to his first grass final, with his best previous result on the lawns a semi-final showing last year at a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/wimbledon/540/overview'Wimbledon/a (l. to Djokovic). He will meet 2022 Halle champion a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/hubert-hurkacz/hb71/overview'Hubert Hurkacz/a in Sunday's title match./p

p"It means a lot. I had four very tough matches to go to the final," Sinner said in his post-match interview. "It was a good match today. Definitely more rallies than yesterday and that's exactly what I needed today. I'm happy and let's see what's coming tomorrow."/p

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p lang="en" dir="ltr"Ticking off the milestones ????????br /

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World No.1 a href="https://twitter.com/janniksin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@janniksin/a also heads into a 1st grass final 6-4, 7-6(3) over Zhanga href="https://twitter.com/ATPHalle?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@ATPHalle/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TerraWortmannOpen?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#TerraWortmannOpen/a a href="https://t.co/0rXohGdRcG"pic.twitter.com/0rXohGdRcG/a/p

mdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1804529727199162407?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"June 22, 2024/a/blockquote

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pIn a match of fine margins that hung on a knife's edge throughout, Sinner claimed his lone break point late in the opening set and saved the only break point against him to erase a set point for Zhang at 5-6 in the second. Sinner ripped a brave forehand winner to fend off that break chance, then made good on a fast start to the tie-break to escape in two sets in the pair's first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting./p

p"In important moments [I was] trying to serve well," the Italian said. "He returned actually really well in some moments so I had to be very careful. I had to save a set point in the second set. If not I had to go again in three sets. But this is a grass court, anything can happen."/p

pBoth Sinner and Zhang won 80 per cent of their first-serve points in a match dominated by the server. Sinner fired eight aces and Zhang hit nine, according to Infosys ATP Stats./p

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pThe 22-year-old is bidding to becomenbsp;the eighth man in PIF ATP Rankings history to win the title in his first event as a World No. 1, and the first to do it since a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/andy-murray/mc10/overview'Andy Murray/a at the 2016nbsp;a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/nitto-atp-finals/605/overview'Nitto ATP Finals/a./p

pZhang was seeking his second Top 5 win of the week after he beat World No. 5 a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/daniil-medvedev/mm58/overview'Daniil Medvedev/a on Wednesday for the best career win by PIF ATP Ranking. Playing in his second ATP Tour semi-final (Hamburg 2023), the 27-year-old was stopped short in his bid to become the second Chinese player to reach a tour-level final (Wu Yibing, Dallas 2023). Zhang was also attempting to become the first Chinese player to beat a reigning World No. 1./p

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