Djokovic's loss to a qualifier scrambles the race for the ATP Finals

Novak Djokovic's bid to qualify for a 17th consecutive Nitto ATP Finals suffered a serious setback this week at the Rolex Paris Masters, where the 39-year-old Serb was beaten in the second round by Rinky Hijikata, an Australian qualifier ranked outside the world's top 80. Hijikata followed the result by reaching his first ATP Masters 1000 quarterfinal on Thursday, continuing a breakthrough run at the indoor hard-court event that has reshaped the scramble for the final places at the season-ending championships in Turin.

Hijikata won 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 over Djokovic in two hours and 13 minutes on Wednesday, according to the ATP Tour's official match report, saving all three break points he faced in the deciding set. It was his first win over Djokovic after two previous defeats, and the fourth top-20 scalp of his season. A day earlier, Djokovic had needed three sets and a medical timeout for his shoulder to get past Valentin Vacherot in the first round, a match in which he became, at 39, the oldest first-round winner in the tournament's history.

A career-best week for an unseeded Australian

Hijikata, from Sydney, arrived in Paris without a direct entry, winning two qualifying matches before beating 20th-ranked Luciano Darderi in the first round. He then beat Djokovic and, on Thursday, Tomas Martin Etcheverry 2-6, 6-3, 7-5 to reach the quarterfinals, a result that is already a career-best for him at Masters 1000 level and lifted him toward a new career-high ranking. He is due to play Luca Van Assche, an unseeded Frenchman who beat Musetti in three sets on Thursday, in Friday's quarterfinal. The other last-eight matches pit third seed Ben Shelton against Tommy Paul, Casper Ruud against lucky loser Nuno Borges, and second seed Carlos Alcaraz against Taylor Fritz, after Alcaraz advanced when Matteo Berrettini withdrew.

"That's been the key this week for me: to try and impose my game as much as I can and back myself in the big moments," Hijikata said after the win, according to the ATP Tour.

What the loss means for Djokovic

The result carries outsized weight because of a rule change the ATP introduced for this season: 2026 is the first year in which the Paris Masters, rather than the smaller tournaments that follow it, serves as the final cutoff event for qualification points toward the Nitto ATP Finals, the eight-man season finale that runs in Turin, Italy, from November 15 to 22. A semifinal run in Paris was Djokovic's clearest remaining route to a place in the field; his exit in the second round leaves that path effectively closed with no more ranking events left to play before the cutoff.

Djokovic has already won his 102nd tour-level title this season, in Beijing last month, and reached the Australian Open final in January, but he enters the week outside the top eight in the Pif ATP Live Race to Turin and now has no further Masters 1000 or ATP 500 events on his calendar to close the gap. He has reached the Finals every year since 2007 with the exception of 2017, when a right elbow injury sidelined him for much of the second half of that season.

"Nobody loves losing. It's just another match, but I should've won this match," Djokovic said, as quoted by the ATP Tour, after his defeat to Hijikata.

A race already thinned by one absence

The qualification picture had already been upended by Jannik Sinner, the world No. 1, who ended his season in early October because of inflammation in his right knee, an injury that forced him to miss the US Open and the entire Asian hard-court swing. Sinner's withdrawal removed the top seed from Turin contention and tightened the race for the places beneath him, a field that the ATP's own coverage of the Djokovic-Hijikata match now lists as led in the chase for the last two spots by Taylor Fritz, ranked 11th in the live race, and Tommy Paul, ranked 13th — both of whom reached Thursday's quarterfinals and are still playing in Paris. Daniil Medvedev had already secured a place in Turin earlier in the Asian swing, according to tennis website reporting on the race.

Reaction from the Australian contingent

Local wire coverage of the tournament, carried by Australian regional papers including the Illawarra Mercury, framed Hijikata's run as a highlight of an otherwise difficult season for Australian men's tennis outside of Alex de Minaur, the country's top-ranked player. Beating Djokovic and then advancing to the quarterfinals already pushed Hijikata, a 2023 Australian Open mixed-doubles-adjacent champion (he won that year's men's doubles title with Jason Kubler), past James Duckworth to become Australia's second-ranked singles player. Djokovic, for his part, had entered the tournament defending a run of seven Paris Masters titles, a tournament record, and had spoken before the Hijikata match about silencing doubters of his form at 39, saying after his first-round win over Vacherot: "For an old guy, not so bad, huh?!"

What's next

The Paris Masters quarterfinals were played Friday, with semifinals and the final to follow over the weekend. Hijikata's run continues against Van Assche, with a place in the final four at stake and the possibility of an unseeded, qualifier-driven bottom half of the draw reaching the semifinals. Further up the bracket, Fritz's quarterfinal against Alcaraz and Paul's against Shelton carry direct consequences for the two remaining Nitto ATP Finals places, with the field for Turin set to be finalized once play in Paris concludes this weekend, ahead of the tournament's opening on November 15.