Stefanos Tsitsipas: "I want to bring an Olympic medal to my country and win a Grand Slam title in 2024"

World No. 6 Stefanos Tsitsipas has laid out his goals for 2024, which include bringing Olympic glory to Greece and winning a Grand Slam title, with the Paris Olympics around the corner.

Tsitsipas' 2023 season was a mixed bag, considering he only won one title at the Los Cabos Open. The highlight of his campaign this year was reaching the Australian Open final, where he was defeated by Novak Djokovic. Apart from that, Tsitsipas made it to another title bout at the Barcelona Open.

The Greek's season ended abruptly when he retired with a back injury after only three games of his ATP Finals' second group-stage match against Holger Rune. He then recently competed in the World Tennis League but spent the majority of his time on the sidelines due to the same injury issues.

During the mixed-team tournament, Stefanos Tsitsipas spoke with The National at Etihad Arena in the UAE, where he revealed his two most important goals for next year, saying:

"I want to obviously bring an Olympic medal back to my country, that is a goal of mine. I want to win a Grand Slam title [in 2024], that is also a goal of mine."

The 25-year-old also stated that he must be "healthy" to successfully execute his plans:

"For sure, in order for me to do these things I need to be healthy because there was a time this season where certain circumstances didn’t allow me to perform at 100 per cent; what I’m talking about those instances, they appeared after the Australian Open this year, and towards the end of the season."

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Stefanos Tsitsipas hopes to "gain confidence" from his Australian Open 2023 campaign

Stefanos Tsitsipas (R) pictured with his 2023 Australian Open runners-up trophy alongside champion Novak Djokovic

Stefanos Tsitsipas will begin his 2024 season at the United Cup, where he will hope to lead Greece to title-winning glory alongside WTA World No. 9 Maria Sakkari and others.

The Greek revealed in the same interview with The National that he was unable to get the necessary amount of pre-season preparation. However, spending quality time with his family and going to rehab constantly improved his situation.

"I wasn’t able to get the preparation that I actually needed – I’m talking about all the weeks (I was hoping to get)," Tsitsipas said.

"However, I did spend quality time with my family and I did spend a few weeks trying to find a solution to all of this [physical problems] and I think it paid off, going for many days in a row into rehab and committing myself to the process of absolute healing," he added.

Tsitsipas added that he hopes to gain confidence from his Australian Open campaign this year:

"I can definitely gain confidence from that. However, I don’t reminisce and I don’t think too much about what happened in Australia this year. My whole plan is to reboot myself and get myself going for something absolutely new this season with a different quality of tennis I may say."