The ATP season finale in London has a strange vibe to it this year. Compared to the last few years, a relatively newer octet of players will take to the court at the ATP World Tour Finals on Sunday. There is the striking absence of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal too. The biggest takeaway of the tournament this year however is the fight to the finish between the new World No. 1 Andy Murray and the man he replaced in the spot, Novak Djokovic.
The simple equation for the World Tour Finals is that between the two, whoever wins the tournament will finish the year as the No. 1 player. Certain permutations however have been factored into this equation, which accentuates the lop-sidedness of the playing field.
It’s all about the points
Murray leads Djokovic by 405 points in the Association of Tennis Professionals’ rankings. However, since he will be dropping 275 points from his last year’s Davis Cup tie, he leads by 130 points in actuality. In order to finish the year ranked as the No. 1 player, Murray has to win the tournament, preferably without losing a single match en route. The variable for Djokovic is that even if he wins the tournament after having won only one round robin match, he will regain his ranking and finish as the World No. 1 for the third straight year, and fifth overall.
The points system for the Tour Finals is such that a win in every round robin match garners a player 200 points, a win in the semi-final 400 points and a win in the final, 500 points. If a player wins the tournament undefeated, he will earn a total of 1,500 points.
The correlation of points is leveraged further by the group, Murray and Djokovic have been sorted into.
Does Djokovic enjoy an advantage?
Murray has been grouped into the John McEnroe Group that also has Stan Wawrinka, Kei Nishikori and Marin Cilic. Of the last three, form woes have not hampered Cilic or Nishikori with both expected to do well, but it been a dissimilar trajectory for Wawrinka.
The Swiss’ form has seemingly gone into hibernation after his US Open win, but the unpredictability that has had him win Majors – three of them, one every year since 2014 – cannot be discounted. Especially considering the fact that he has reached the semi-finals every year that he has qualified, again starting in 2014.
None of the troika are however battling fatigue, unlike Murray who has been playing non-stop in the last few weeks. With his sights set on toppling Djokovic, post the US Open, Murray has played – and won – four back-to-back tourneys, the China Open in Beijing, the Shanghai Masters, the Erste Bank Open in Vienna and the last at the Paris Masters, last week. If the Scotsman wins the ATP finals, after getting past these opponents in the round robin matches and one more in the semi-final, it will be his fifth straight title. It is quite a tall order.
The Serbian does not have such a tough ask – at least in the initial rounds. Placed in the Ivan Lendl Group, Djokovic has been joined by Milos Raonic, Dominic Thiem and Gael Monfils. Not only does he enjoy a one-sided domination against these rivals, his potential path ahead in the tournament has been given a leg-up by the fact that all three players struggling to grapple with their fitness, physical and mental.
Raonic had to forgo his semi-final in Paris against Murray with an injury to his right quad and there was a possibility that he might have to give the year-end finals a miss as well. Monfils, debuting in his first Tour Finals, has been laid low by an injury to his rib that forced him to pull out of the Paris Masters. Fellow first-time qualifier Thiem is not injured, but he is definitely not the player he was in the first half of this season. The Austrian’s game has dipped as if bowed down by its own weight and by the burden of having played 27 tournaments across this year – the most by any player in the top 20, let alone the top 10.
Surprises along the way
These pointers have indeed set the scene for an open week. But the finals have a way of raising different eventualities, when least expected. Be it then two non-Slam winners, David Nalbanian and Nikolay Davydenko winning the tournament in 2005 and 2009. Or be it Djokovic’s win over Federer in the 2015 final, despite losing his round robin match to him.
It is an eight-player elite journey in the British capital and one among them will stand tall. Whether or not predicted, whether or not expected. And mostly, whether or not awaited.
