Stefanos Tsitsipas news: Monte Carlo champion sets new goals for the season

Lucy Roberts

Stefanos Tsitsipas won the Monte Carlo Masters last week for the second year running after overcoming Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the final of the competition and has his sights set on breaking the dominance of some members of the Big Three – Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal.

With Nadal out injured with a rib issue he sustained at the Indian Wells Masters and Djokovic not having the luxury of being able to pick and choose what competitions he wants to play in due to some countries not allowing him in due to their vaccine restrictions, this might well be a realistic goal.

The world No 5 is on track in the race to the ATP Finals as he’s currently No 2 due to the points he’s won in 2022 alone, but he wants to do even better than that.

“My goal ever since I have realised that is if I’m able to score points on this surface as much as I can and really concentrate on the other surfaces a bit more, I can really pull off a great year, maybe even finishing among the two best tennis players at the end of the season,” the 23-year-old revealed.

“I’m always trying to bring the best I can from clay and adjust accordingly to other surfaces, I really want to be doing well on hard and grass this year because I feel like I can really get a lot of points there – if I’m able to win matches with the same consistency I do on this surface I think I have a big chance of finishing the year in the top two which is a huge goal of mine to finally be there and belong in that group of special players.

“My tennis is great I think everywhere with clay maybe being the surface that I can adjust to the best, I’ve had moments where I was trying to apply what I apply on clay on hard, doesn’t seem to be working much, sometimes it’s not really the way to go – but it has also taught me a lot that I should adjust and I should never become obsessed with okay whatever works on clay should work on faster surfaces.”

Tsitsipas is about to play in the Barcelona Open and he will play his opening round tomorrow where he will face Ilya Ivashka.