Jannik Sinner has not lost a match since May 28, when Juan Manuel Cerúndolo beat him in the second round of the French Open. And he has not played one since July 12, the day he beat Alexander Zverev in the Wimbledon final. Seven straight wins at the All England Club sit between those dates. But after them comes a gap of 83 days, which grew longer on Saturday when the world No. 1 withdrew from the Rolex Shanghai Masters.

“Unfortunately, I won’t be able to play at the Rolex Shanghai Masters this year as I had hoped,” he wrote on an Instagram story. “I always enjoy playing in front of the Shanghai fans, and I’m very sorry that I won’t be able to do so next week. Thank you for all your support. I’m looking forward to seeing you again next year.”

The decision is being linked to the knee injury that has kept him out since Wimbledon. When he pulled out of the US Open on August 21, he said the work in Monte-Carlo had made one thing clear: “I still need more time to recover from my right knee issue”. While no official diagnosis has been released, Italian journalist Gabriele Parpiglia has reported that Sinner is dealing with iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS), a condition affecting the tissue along the outside of the knee.

The latest decision also comes amid a widely circulated fan post. On Friday, a fan photo placed Sinner at a Lyon restaurant near the Centre Orthopédique Santy, prompting Italian media to speculate that he had visited the area for a knee consultation. However, no official explanation came out regarding the same.

Shanghai is the fifth event he will be missing since lifting the Wimbledon trophy. He skipped the Canadian Open in late July, saying he was putting his health first. He then pulled out of Cincinnati on August 9, and was out of the US Open twelve days later. On September 25, he told Chinese fans in a video message that he would not defend his Beijing title, which he won last year against Learner Tien. The stated target for a return, as Tennis Majors reported then, was Shanghai. Now, that is out of the equation as well.

The absence has become worrying for fans, especially considering what Sinner was putting up before. He went into the break with a 44-3 record and titles at Indian Wells, Miami, Monte-Carlo, Madrid, Rome and Wimbledon. Before this year, he had reached only one clay-court Masters 1000 final, in Rome twelve months earlier, which he lost to Carlos Alcaraz. He then beat Alcaraz in Monte-Carlo, Zverev in Madrid and Casper Ruud in Rome, and that made him the second man after Rafael Nadal, in 2010, to win all three clay Masters in one season.

The Rome title also completed his set of all nine Masters events, something only Novak Djokovic had done, and stretched his Masters winning streak to 34 matches, past Djokovic’s 31. It was not a spotless year, surely. Djokovic beat him in five sets at the Australian Open, Jakub Menšík beat him in Doha, and Cerúndolo beat him in Paris after Sinner led by two sets. He, though, responded at Wimbledon, successfully defending his title with a 6-7(7), 7-6(2), 6-3, 6-4 victory over Zverev for his fifth major.

After Rome, the ATP noted he was one title short of Djokovic’s single-season record of six Masters crowns. With the Canadian Open and Cincinnati behind him and Shanghai now gone, the Paris Masters in November is his only route to six, and six would equal the record rather than beat it.

That said, Shanghai has been a mixed bag for Sinner. His run to the 2024 Shanghai final also helped him clinch year-end No. 1, making him the first Italian to finish a season atop the ATP rankings. He then beat Djokovic 7-6(4), 6-3, denying the Serb a 100th career title, and at 23 became the tournament’s youngest champion. Last year went the other way. As the defending champion, he beat Daniel Altmaier in the opener, then retired against Tallon Griekspoor in the third round, trailing 6-7(3), 7-5, 3-2 and cramping in heavy humidity. He later put it down partly to a mental factor.

Sinner’s withdrawal from Shanghai further puts his No. 1 ranking at risk. The Italian is set to lose the 50 points he earned from reaching the third round in Shanghai last year, while Alexander Zverev can make up ground by continuing his run in Beijing and then competing in Shanghai. Zverev entered the Beijing swing 1,370 points behind Sinner, and recent ranking projections showed that he could overtake the Italian by winning both events.

Vienna and the Paris Masters are among the next events on Sinner’s schedule, and there is also the Six Kings Slam exhibition in Riyadh from October 21. Whether the knee allows any of them is a question the Saturday story left open.