Hijikata Stuns Djokovic in Paris and Ends His ATP Finals Bid

Novak Djokovic’s season ended in Paris on Wednesday, and it ended at the hands of a qualifier ranked 83rd in the world. Rinky Hijikata beat the seven-time Paris champion 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the second round, a comeback that closed the door on Djokovic’s bid for the season-ending ATP Finals in Turin. For a set and a few games, the match looked like a formality. Then Hijikata started hitting through the court, Djokovic started fading, and the formality became the upset of the tournament.

How did Djokovic lose a match he was dominating?

He said so himself afterwards. Djokovic described it as a disappointment, losing a match he felt he was dominating for a set and a few games, then completely losing control as Hijikata played out of his mind, not missing and keeping the ball low. The first set backed him up: Djokovic broke early, built a double-break advantage and closed it 6-2. The turn came in the second set, when Hijikata broke in the eighth game and served it out to level the match. In the decider, Djokovic remonstrated with his team at the start of the third set, dropped his serve in the seventh game at 3-3, and lost the match when his backhand landed wide. Tennis365 reports he faded physically and appeared to rush through the final games while struggling with a physical ailment, though no specific injury was announced, so the fade is visible in the scoreline rather than diagnosed in a statement.

What did Hijikata do differently after the first set?

He stopped surviving and started imposing. Hijikata said the key all week had been trying to impose his game as much as he could and backing himself in the big moments, after a few months in which he had gone passive under pressure. He admitted Djokovic was too good for him for the first set and a little bit, and that he was just trying to hang tough and maintain his level for as long as he could. The numbers show what happened when he did: 37 winners to Djokovic’s 18, including 29 off the forehand, in a two-hour-17-minute match. This was his fourth win of the week in Paris, after two qualifying victories and a 6-2, 6-2 first-round win over world No. 21 Luciano Darderi, and his first set ever won against Djokovic, having lost both previous meetings.

Why does this defeat matter so much for Djokovic?

Because it closes two long-running books at once. Djokovic needed a semi-final run in Paris to keep any realistic chance of reaching the Finals, which run from November 15 to 22 in Turin, and he arrived 11th in the Race to Turin with almost no margin left. The defeat leaves him unable to qualify, the first time he has missed the season-ending event since 2017. It also means, EssentiallySports notes, the first season since 2005 in which he has failed to reach a single Masters 1000 quarter-final. That is the scale of the upset: not just a second-round loss, but the end of a 20-year run of deep runs at this level. His season still included an Australian Open final and a Wimbledon semi-final, and Tennis365 reports he is due to play one final event, a tournament in Greece next week, before shutting down for the year.

What does the result do to the rest of the Turin race?

It hands the advantage to Rafael Jodar, and it ends Alex de Minaur’s hopes on the same day. De Minaur, who needed one win to overtake Jodar for the last qualifying place, lost 7-6 (2), 6-3 to Tomas Martin Etcheverry, who now faces Hijikata in the third round on Thursday. Jodar stays ninth on 3,234 points to de Minaur’s 3,170, with ninth the last place in while Jannik Sinner is out for the season. AP also notes that Frances Tiafoe’s defeat to Quentin Halys qualified Arthur Fils for Turin, the first Frenchman to reach the event since Gael Monfils in 2016. The race, in other words, moved on three fronts in one afternoon, and Djokovic’s was the biggest name to fall out of it.

How does this fit the rest of Wednesday in Paris?

It capped a day of upsets that started with the new world No. 1 losing too. Alexander Zverev lost his first match as No. 1 to Lorenzo Musetti, 7-6 (5), 6-2, in the other headline second-round match, and the logic row over Djokovic’s Paris campaign that played out earlier in the week now reads very differently with the campaign over. The contrast with Zverev’s situation is sharp: Zverev has already secured his Turin place, so Paris was about form and statement, while Djokovic needed Paris to survive, and Paris said no. Hijikata, meanwhile, goes from qualifier to last-16 player with a win over a 24-time major champion, and the forehand that did the damage is now the shot everyone in the draw will be watching on Thursday.

What happens next?

Hijikata plays Etcheverry on Thursday for a place in the quarter-finals, a match neither man would have been pencilled in for at the start of the week. For Djokovic, the questions move to Greece next week and then to 2027: whether the physical fade in Paris was a one-match dip or a sign of what a 39-year-old season now costs him. For the Turin race, the remaining places will be decided by who survives Paris, with Jodar watching from ninth and hoping nobody behind him puts together the run he could not. The field has been taking shape all autumn, including through the Vienna retirements that shook the race. The door that was swinging open for Djokovic on Wednesday morning, as Tennis365 put it, swung shut by the evening, and a 25-year-old qualifier from Sydney was the one who closed it.