tennis giant

Chapter 409 ATP Year-End Finals

The ATP year-end finals is a very special event.

At the end of each year, the ATP Finals will be held in different cities in different countries. The key point is that there are only 8 people eligible for the competition.

Moreover, the issuance of its qualifications is not based on the current ATP world ranking, but an "invitation system".

In other words, only the eight male professional tennis players with the best comprehensive performance in this season are eligible to participate in the ATP year-end finals.

Therefore, being able to participate in this event is already a very good honor in itself.

What's more, although there are only 8 contestants in this event, the prize money is extremely rich. If you can win the championship, you will get more than 100 million US dollars in prize money, and you can also get a full 1500 ATP points!

In this way, the glory of winning the ATP year-end finals championship, compared with the Grand Slam, is probably almost the same, and the impact is really not small.

And An Sheng, relying on his excellent performance since his comeback, was invited by the competition to become one of the eight contestants.

The others are basically Anson's old opponents, namely Federer, Djokovic, Cilic, Anderson, Tim, Zverev, and Kei Nishikori.

The competition system is also very special. A total of eight players are called the "Kurten Group" and the "Hewitt Group", with four players in each group.

First, there is a group round-robin match, and the top two players in the group are determined through the victory and defeat points to advance, and then the semi-finals are crossed to determine the final finalists.

On November 11, An Sheng arrived in London, England in time, and on the same day, he appeared in the O11 Stadium together with 7 other contestants.

It's just that, this time, all eight contestants did not wear sportswear, but wore suits that were rarely seen on them.

The reason for this is that this is a special appearance event organized by the competition party, and by the way, the pre-match draw ceremony is completed.

As for the event itself, there is not much to tell. It is nothing more than everyone sitting down, being interviewed by media reporters, and then taking some group photos for publicity.

But among them, there is a detail that is worth mentioning, that is, when they took a group photo, Federer was undoubtedly in the C position, and the other players were on both sides.

And An Sheng, just appeared in the most marginal position.

In this regard, it is impossible to say that An Sheng doesn't mind at all, but he is also very clear that the status of Federer, Djokovic and others cannot be shaken by him now.

In fact, Anson believes that unless Federer retires, neither he nor other players will be able to stand in the C position.

But An Sheng has this confidence. At this time next year, he can at least stand by Federer's side, and even become another C star.

What must be said is that once the group photo of the ATP year-end finals appeared in the public eye, it immediately attracted the attention of many people, especially in East Asia, which caused quite a stir.

The key is that in this group photo, there are two yellow-skinned Asian players, that is, An Sheng and Kei Nishikori.

This is indeed rare, and it has never appeared in the previous year-end finals. This is the first time, so it has attracted a lot of attention.

But for this matter, An Sheng's reaction was quite cold, including when he was interviewed by the media, he did not respond positively to it.

As for Kei Nishikori, he seems to have said a lot to the media,

Why is there such a big difference between the two?
The reason is not difficult to find, because An Sheng is still very young, while Kei Nishikori is already a 33-year-old veteran. Maybe next year, he will not be able to appear here again.

Coincidentally, through the lottery, An Sheng and Kei Nishikori were in the same group, and they met together in their first game.

On November 11th, at 12 pm local time, the second group match of the Hewitt group, the duel between Anson and Kei Nishikori, officially began.

There is no doubt that this game has a lot of gimmicks, after all, it is an "Asian Derby", and even caused a war of words on the Internet.

But when the game started, all the arguments seemed meaningless.

"Oh!"

An Sheng took the lead to serve, and his first serve, according to the display of the speed board on the sidelines, reached 221 kilometers per hour.

More importantly, its angle has not been affected at all. While delivering high ball speed, it still maintains high quality in terms of landing point and line.

On the other hand, Kei Nishikori seemed to be stupefied by a beating, and he stood there, motionless.

But actually, why would Kei Nishikori not respond?

He had fought against An Sheng several times before, and he was defeated miserably. He already had a deep understanding of An Sheng's powerful strength, so how could he not pay attention to it?

The fact is that the opposite is true. It is precisely because Kei Nishikori knows that An Sheng's serving strength is very strong, so he has to adopt a "betting side" method to receive and serve.

But just now, it was just that he gambled in the wrong direction, and the center of gravity of his body was tilted to the outside, but at that moment, the judgment given in his mind was the opposite, so he froze in place, without moving .

Relying on an inside corner serve, An Sheng scored a point first.

"Oh!"

On the next ball, An Sheng made an outside corner.

But this time, it was Kei Nishikori who gambled, and it was precisely because he shifted his center of gravity in advance. After he made a judgment, he could find the hitting position faster and more accurately, and then completed the reception .

What I have to say is that under such circumstances, the quality of Kei Nishikori's hair extensions is quite good.

But does this work?
You know, Anson can forcefully launch an offensive even in the face of Djokovic's return, so of course he can do the same when facing Kei Nishikori.

In fact, An Sheng did forcibly hit a forehand in the next shot, and scored with one blow.

More importantly, Anson was keen to discover Kei Nishikori's return strategy, so he fully demonstrated the variability of his serve in the subsequent games.

All kinds of routes and landing points are arbitrary and changeable, and Kei Nishikori can't figure it out at all. Even if he guesses right by luck, the result is just to make Ansheng attack more, and it doesn't take much effort.

Soon, An Sheng scored four points in a row and secured serve in the first game.

And when the game came to Kei Nishikori's serve, his condition did not improve.

"Oh!"

This is Kei Nishikori's first serve, and his weak strength is very obvious. Although the landing point is well controlled, the speed of the ball is only 179 kilometers per hour.

Without any hesitation, An Sheng decisively chose to receive a strong attack, and this time, he was obviously aiming for a fatal shot. He not only strengthened his hitting power, but also directly aimed at the opponent's backhand sideline.

As a result, although Kei Nishikori tried his best to catch up and his running ability was not bad, he still failed to catch up.

"Oh!"

On the next ball, An Sheng once again made a strong return attack, but it didn't have a particularly good effect, but it didn't matter, at least he took the initiative in the link of serve and return.

Subsequently, the two sides entered a bottom line stalemate.

The stalemate at the bottom line can be said to be Kei Nishikori's specialty and the basis for his ability to occupy the top ten in the world for a long time.

But facing An Sheng, especially An Sheng who had taken the initiative to attack, Kei Nishikori still couldn't stand it.

It only took three shots to attack, and An Sheng scored a winning point very strongly.

In the subsequent games, there is actually no need to say much, because the result is not suspenseful at all.

最终，仅仅耗时1小时15分钟，安生便是以6比0、6比1的悬殊比方，轻而易举的战胜了锦织圭。

(End of this chapter)