According to the draw results on November 9, Novak Djokovic (Serbia) fell into the Blue Group with Jannik Sinner (Italy), Stefanos Tsitsipas (Greece) and Holger Rune (Denmark). The Red Group including Carlos Alcaraz (Spain), Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev (Russia) and Alexander Zverev (Germany) is considered more unpredictable.
Of the eight players in this year's tournament, 36-year-old Djokovic is still considered the strongest candidate for the championship. The Serbian world No. 1 is still proving to be too strong in the 2023 season, winning three Grand Slam titles at the Australian Open, French Open and US Open, and finishing runner-up at Wimbledon.
Novak Djokovic is still the "heaviest" candidate for the 2023 ATP Finals championship
At present, Nole (Djokovic's nickname) is still playing at a very high level and has 18 unbeaten matches since losing to Alcaraz in the Wimbledon final on July 16. Before coming to the ATP Finals, Djokovic still managed to bring home his 40th career title at the ATP Masters 1,000 tournaments taking place in Paris (France), which is also a world tennis record. Another record is still waiting for Nole in Italy if the 36-year-old tennis player is the winner in the match on November 19 to get his 7th title at the tournament for the 8 strongest tennis players of the year. Currently, Djokovic is sharing the record of 6 ATP Finals titles with Roger Federer.
The person expected to stop Nole is still Alcaraz. The 20-year-old tennis player started this year's season perfectly with major titles at the ATP Masters 1,000 tournaments in Indian Wells and Madrid. However, since the title at Wimbledon, Alcaraz has not played well and has lost consecutively. Alcaraz's biggest advantage is his youth, but participating in the ATP Finals for the first time will make Alcaraz feel confused in this very harsh tournament. The Spanish tennis player will meet Zverev in the opening match at 8:30 p.m. on November 13.
Former 2020 ATP Finals champion Medvedev will be a formidable opponent for any player if he is in good form. The Russian player had a not-so-bad 2023 season with 2 ATP Masters 1,000 titles in Miami and Rome and a runner-up position at the US Open. The two players Sinner and Rublev are also considered tough opponents for the champion when they both won ATP Masters 1,000 titles this season. While the home player Sinner won his first major title in his career at the Canada Masters, Rublev won the Monte-Carlo tournament.
Once considered talents of tennis and having won the ATP Finals, Tsitsipas and Zverev have lost their good form this season without a major title. The 20-year-old Danish tennis player Rune earned a ticket to Italy by reaching deep in clay court tournaments. It would be a big surprise if Rune could win one of the two tickets to the semi-finals of this year's tournament when he is in the Blue Group with Djokovic, Sinner and Tsitsipas.
This year's ATP Finals promises to be very exciting with a record total prize money of 15 million USD. Accordingly, the champion and undefeated player will receive a record prize money in tennis history of up to 4.8 million USD. The old record for prize money in a tournament still belongs to Djokovic with the ATP Finals championship in the 2022 season. At that tournament, Nole had 5 wins to bring home 4.74 million USD. Players participating in the singles event will receive 325,500 USD and each win in the group stage will receive an additional 390,000 USD. The player who wins the semi-finals will receive 1.1 million USD and the winner in the final will receive an additional 2.2 million USD. The champion with an undefeated record will also receive 1,500 ATP bonus points.
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