ATP Halle draw: Jannik Sinner finds out first opponent as world No 1 as he lands tricky draw
Jannik Sinner zoned in
Jannik Sinner will start life as the new world No 1 against Tallon Griekspoor, but he hasn’t landed the kindest of draws at the Halle Open.
The 22-year-old rose to the top of the rankings for the first time in his career after the French Open as he replaced Novak Djokovic at No 1.
The Italian will return to action next week as he will open his grass-court campaign against Griekspoor at the ATP 500 event in Germany.
Sinner leads their head-to-head 4-0 and it will be their third meeting in 2024 with the youngster winning their previous two encounters in Rotterdam and Miami – tournaments he went on to win.
“It will be very difficult. In general he plays well on grass,” the world No 1 said. “He does a lot of serve and volley. He volleys very, very well. It will be a very difficult match, but I’m looking forward to playing on grass.
“It will be a good test for me, for my first match on grass, to see where my level is. I will give everything, and I’m looking forward to the crowd here. The atmosphere is good and I will simply try to enjoy it.”
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The players are all coming off an extended clay-court season so they will need to make some adjustments.
Sinner, who is looking to win his maiden title on grass, added: “It would be very special, because you don’t have so many grass-court tournaments throughout the year.
“It’s only here and Wimbledon where I am playing, so I have only two chances [this year]. But in general, it’s great to be back on grass.
“It’s different. The first day you have to go through the movements on the surface and it’s difficult, especially when you play the first rounds against players who played already on grass. They have a little bit of feeling, but this is a place where they believed in me, they gave me a wildcard in qualies back in the day. So I’m happy to come back here and hopefully I can show some good tennis early on.”
If the reigning Australian Open champion gets past the Dutchman, then he will face either Fabian Marozsan or Roman Safiullin in the second round, but the projected path gets tricky after that.
He will likely meet Stefanos Tsitsipas, who takes on wildcard Henri Squire in his opener, in the quarter-final while he could face world No 5 Daniil Medvedev in the last four.
Medvedev, though, has seventh seed and defending champion Alexander Bublik in his path.
French Open runner-up Alexander Zverev headlines the bottom half of the draw and he will start his campaign against a qualifier with Lorenzo Sonego or Miomr Kecmanovic projected second-round opponents.
If the seeds reach the latter stages of the tournament, then the second-seeded Zverev will face Felix Auger-Aliassime in the quarter-final and Andrey Rublev in the semi-final.
Fourth seed Rublev, though, has a difficult draw as he faces Marcos Giron in the first round, potentially Matteo Berrettini in the second round while fifth seed Hubert Hurkacz could await in the last eight.