Jannik Sinner stays perfect in Turin
If Turin needed a comfort blanket, Jannik Sinner happily supplied one. The defending champion beat Ben Shelton 6–3, 7–6(3) on Friday to finish the group stage 3–0 and stretch his ATP Finals winning streak to eight matches without dropping a set. ATP Tour+2ATP Tour+2
For a set and a half this looked like classic indoor Sinner – clean ball‑striking, ruthless on short balls, and laser‑precise returning. Shelton, on debut at this event, came out understandably tight and leaked errors on the forehand side. Once the American loosened up in set two, though, the match turned into a serve‑plus‑first‑strike shootout. According to Infosys ATP Stats, Shelton dropped only two service points across the first nine games of that second set; Sinner simply kept holding his nerve until the breaker. ATP Tour+1
In the tie-break, the Italian finally cracked the code, attacking behind deep returns and transitioning forward instead of settling into baseline roulette. The result: an efficient one hour, 35-minute win, Bjorn Borg group perfection, and Shelton headed home winless but far from hopeless after an “8 out of 10” season he can absolutely build on. Hindustan Times+3ATP Tour+3ATP Tour+3
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Sinner’s unbeaten ATP Finals streak continues
The scarier part for the rest of the field is that Sinner himself doesn’t think this is peak tennis yet. “When you come here and win all three round-robin matches, you have to play at a very high level, which I’ve done,” he said, adding that serving well in key moments and the Turin crowd made it “a very special day.” ATP Tour+2ATP Tour+2
He now rides a 29‑match indoor win streak into a semi-final against Alex de Minaur, a player he has never lost to in twelve meetings. ATP Tour+2Wikipedia+2 That head-to-head sounds brutal, but Sinner’s already warning himself – and us – not to read it as automatic. After the match he praised De Minaur’s response to a brutal loss earlier in the week and admitted, “He doesn’t have a lot to lose… I have a lot to lose.” ATP Tour+2ABC+2
The bigger picture: Sinner has turned this event into his personal lab for “winner’s tennis” – aggressive from the baseline, using his backhand up the line to open the court, then finishing with that heavier forehand. Against Shelton, he showed the grown‑up version of that style: no panic when the serve barrage came, just patience, smart patterns, and trust in his return.
First Ball Forehand Match Point: When a big server redlines, don’t try to hit bigger; build a game plan that saves your aggression for the first neutral ball, exactly the way Sinner did in that second‑set tiebreak.
