Just ten days before his appearance at the ATP finals, Stefanos Tsitsipas withdraws from the Paris Masters, citing an arm injury.
He was nervous not to provoke it before the tour finals. “I haven’t retired once in my life, and it was something that I had to do today…I’m trying to be cautious for the next tournament, which is the most important one for me. I have had an issue there for quite a while now.
“It has gotten bigger in the past couple of weeks, so I’m just trying to protect it. I felt the pain playing in the match, and I just don’t want for it to get worse than it is now. I know how to treat it, but playing every day, going out on the court practising doesn’t make it better.
“It’s not easy to just stop, especially when you have important tournaments like this one here that I really wanted to do well [in]. It hurts a lot not to be able to play at the level that I’m expected to play, and I’m expecting myself to play.
“I’m going to have treatment. I’m going to try and have the best people treat me and give me the best advice – anything possible to recover and be 100 percent again.”
He had qualified in the third seed this year and has won the event in the past, defeating Dominic Thiem in the 2019 final.
