ATP World Tour Finals: Race wide open on the road to London

The tennis season is in for a thrilling climax, with some 50 odd days remaining for the grand finale in London. In what might be the most open race to the finals, only three men have made the cut thus far. Rafael Nadal, the runaway leader, is joined by Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray as the men who have already sealed a berth at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals at the O2 Arena in London. David Ferrer is also perhaps another certainty, but there are at least nine players vying for the remaining four spots at the prestigious event. Tomas Berdych (3,405 pts) and John Isner (2,015) are separated by just 1,390 points with substantial tennis left to play.

While Nadal has been on a tearing rush ever since he returned from a lengthy layoff, the rest of the pack are just gasping for breath at the mind numbing consistency of the Spaniard. Nadal leads Djokovic by a whopping 3,040 points in the race to the finals. Considering that Djokovic has a meagre 120 points on Nadal in the rankings, it is already hard to see how he might stop the Spaniard take the year end honours on the ranking charts.

Nadal has yet to be beaten this year on a hard court, having won all his 22 matches including two ATP World Tour Masters Series events and his second grand slam title of the year with another brilliant victory over Djokovic at the Flushing Meadows. Djokovic has made three major finals this year – winning in Australia, but losing at Wimbledon and the US Open. Andy Murray did not play in Paris due to injury but his run to the finals at Melbourne and an historic victory at Wimbledon were enough to see him through.

Besides victories in Auckland and Buenos Aires, Ferrer has been his usual picture of consistency even though he has failed to win another title. The tireless Spaniard reached at least the quarter-finals at each of the four Grand Slam events this year. He reached the semis in Melbourne and reached the first major final of his career when he did so at the French Open. With 4,900 points in the kitty, Ferrer certainly has a foot in the door.

It is beyond Ferrer that the race intensifies with several possibilities for a bunch of eager men. In the coming weeks there are two Masters Series events and four other events with 500 points on offer. That is a total of 4,000 points between those events at Shanghai, Paris, Beijing, Basel, Tokyo and Valencia. With less than 1400 points separating the fifth and thirteenth players in the race to London, there is plenty to play for at these events during the coming weeks.

No one is safe, not even Roger Federer. As it is, the fact that we had to wait nearly 500 words till we brought up the name of the Swiss in a discussion about the tour finals seems sacrilegious. But then these are turbulent times for the ageing Federer and he has work to do before he secures a place at the table for November’s gala event. Federer is currently lying in seventh, 310 points adrift from Juan Martin Del Potro and only 130 ahead of Stanislas Wawrinka behind him.

The Swiss maestro is scheduled to play in Shanghai, Basel and Paris in the lead up to the tour finals. On current form, with a bunch of men pushing from behind, Federer will need at least a 1000 points or more from those three events to secure a spot at the finals. The world No. 6 has been a steady hand at the season ending event ever since his debut at the event in 2002. But for a round robin exit in 2008, Federer has at least made the semis of this event which he won a record six times in his glittering career.

Wawrinka and Richard Gasquet have taken a giant stride towards London making a forceful case for themselves with a run to the semi-finals of the US Open. However, the two men will have to notch up some healthy results in October to further buttress their cases for a place at the most elite of tennis events.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s injury driven absence from the US Open may have knocked the Frenchman down to tenth in the chase, but the enigmatic artist has enjoyed past success on the indoor courts. If he could take good care of his rehab and return to the tour refreshed, he could be one of the men running hard to shake up the pecking order and force his way to London.

Milos Raonic, Tommy Haas and John Isner bring up the rear end of this intense chase but all three have shown an impressive vein of form in recent months. The three of them are not too far away from the pack and a good result for any of these players at the two Master Series events could help them make a compelling case for finishing inside the top eight or nine players with an invitation to fly to London in November.

The last Grand Slam may well have been put to bed, but there is still plenty of tennis to be played. Pride and prize will equally drive the many men with a chance to stake out a claim to play at the O2 arena on the quick paced indoor hard courts. Brace up and follow the action here to gain up to the minute insights on the final lap of the tennis season.