Jannik after his three-set victory over Atmane: “I’m thinking mainly about my serve rotations. Today I tried more drop shots and serve and volley. We have to be careful not to overdo it.”

A hard-fought victory over Atmane, two serves lost to love after a missed volley. Jannik Sinner had said it: there would be new things, but they still needed to be worked on. He reiterated this after a hard-fought victory to reach the quarterfinals in Beijing: “I’m trying to do new things on the court, and I’m putting a lot of mental energy into this, but we have to be careful not to do too much. We mustn’t upset my identity, change everything I am as a player.”

Jannik, very lucid, illustrated his current strategy: “Right now, I’m trying to do, let’s say, 80% of my usual tennis and 20% new things; in my opinion, I should get to 90-95% of who I am and try to change 5%, and maybe at the beginning do these different things in the quieter moments. I’m thinking mainly about serve rotations, then today I tried more drop shots and serve and volley. But I have to be careful not to lose who I am. Anyway, it’s all part of the process, it’s normal.“

in testing—  The mechanism still needs some fine-tuning. ”I still think too much, it’s impossible to automate everything in such a short time,” he admitted. Now he will face Hungary’s Marozsan in the quarterfinals. “We played each other in Halle more than a year ago,” Sinner said at a press conference. “He’s playing well. I’ve seen his matches here, he has very high peaks, he hits hard and has great touch. It’s a new challenge and I can’t wait to face it.”