Novak Djokovic defeated Lorenzo Musetti in a thrilling final at the Hellenic Championship in Athens, Greece to knock the Italian out of ATP Tour Finals contention — at least temporarily.
The 24-time Grand Slam champion ebbed, gasped and flung his way to victory, doing the splits off one improbable winner and recovering from a one-set deficit, and several spurned opportunities, to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 and lift his 101st ATP Tour title.
After the win, he sat in his chair exhausted by the joy of it, before giving his trophy speech in which he did not confirm whether or not he would play the ATP Tour Finals, which begins Sunday Nov. 9.
Djokovic, 38, has been the wild card in the qualification race for the ATP Tour Finals for several weeks. He loomed over the Paris Masters despite not being present at the final ATP 1000 event of the year, as Musetti, Auger-Aliassime, Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Bublik fought for one spot that could have become two, depending on Djokovic’s feelings.
By reaching the final in the French capital, Auger-Aliassime left Musetti in a win-or-bust scenario going into the Hellenic Championship, which Djokovic’s family owns, having moved what was the Belgrade Open amid a backlash within Serbia over Djokovic’s support for student protests against its president, Aleksandar Vučić. Or perhaps win, bust, or wait-and-see, with any result sufficient for the Italian were Djokovic to decide not to travel to Turin.
“I would like to thank the people of Greece for coming out, supporting sport,” Djokovic said in his on-court interview. “Playing here, and being here, just feels like home.”
With Djokovic and Musetti awaiting their Grecian duel, the ATP Tour Finals’ pre-tournament party went ahead with six players rather than eight, following the round-robin draw that landed Djokovic in a group with world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz, Taylor Fritz of the U.S. and Alex de Minaur of Australia.
Djokovic is 14-1 against the latter two players, and has said that he sees three-set events as his best forum in which to challenge Alcaraz and world No. 2 Jannik Sinner. The fast, indoor conditions in Turin, which suit Djokovic’s late-career evolution into a metronomically precise server who attacks at will, are another potential boost to his chances.
Musetti, who had not won a title since 2022 going into the final, has said that his push to make the ATP Tour Finals for the first time — in his home country — has been a painful one. “It’s becoming not a dream, but a nightmare, honestly. I’m fighting every week, since Wimbledon I’m playing straight every week,” he said during an on-court interview at the European Open in Brussels in October. He has now lost six consecutive finals.