CHAMPAGNE, SHENANIGANS AND THE BARCLAYS ATP WORLD TENNIS TOUR FINALS DRAW, LIVE(ISH) FROM LONDON BY GLOBAL CHICK

Written by: Staff on 12th November 2015

CHAMPAGNE, SHENANIGANS AND THE BARCLAYS ATP WORLD TENNIS TOUR FINALS DRAW, LIVE(ISH) FROM LONDON BY GLOBAL CHICK |

Imagine the scene… all around the world, people were glued to a YouTube channel, for…an eternity!

Meanwhile the doubles players entertained us with selfies we were being told “Welcome.” Twitterverse tweeted their dissatisfaction and Global Chick refrained from pointing out that the draw was due to be 8pm anyways, so what was the issue!

We pause for a message from our sponsors – there is a new fangled ATP App that no doubt Global Chick will spend ages trying to download and get working, and a quick state of the ATP Nation (which is apparently doing quite well, thank you very much).

By the way – the World Tour Finals will stay in London until 2018, so make sure you keep those brollies to hand, and oooh more history! First time the draw was being done live with the players coming up on stage for the doubles and the singles draws.

First up were the doubles (with some awfully suspect pronounciations!)

Group Fleming/McEnroe: Jean-Julien Rojer/Horia Tecau, Ivan Dodig/Marcelo Melo, Pierre-Hugues Herbert/Nicolas Mahut, Marcin Matkowski/Nenad Zimonjic

Group Ashe/Smith: Bob & Mike Bryan, Jamie Murray/John Peers, Simone Bolelli/Fabio Fognini, Rohan Bopanna/Florin Mergea

It really could be the final showdown as four of the teams are in with a mathematical shout at becoming the year end No. 1 team (Bryans, Rojer/Tecau, Dodig/Melo and Murray/Peers).

Finally, it was time for more fun and games on stage, with London Mayor Boris Johnson somewhat confused about the whole seeding and group stage set up, as he drew the seeds to separate them.

Group A (Stan Smith): Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Tomas Berdych, Kei Nishikori

Group B (Ilie Nastase): Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka, Rafael Nadal, Davis Ferrer

The groups are quite balanced to be honest, and of course there are no easy matches. Now starts the next bit of fun as we expect timelines to be filled with “Now which days do I go for to see [/insert player here]. The answer of course is pick the sessions of two consecutive days – that way you get to see all eight of the world’s best players! Seriously – the world’s best players are (quite literally) under one tent – why would you not want to see as many of them in one hit?

That’s before we even get to the scenarios at the end of the week, but let’s not count on our fingers and toes just yet (at least, not without a Starbucks and a bag of their divine chocolate fudge cubes… we will be doing a LOT of walking that off over the week)!

While the Moet & Chandon continued to flow, now we get down to the nitty gritty.

In the Stan Smith group, Federer and Djokovic will renew a fascinating battle this year that has seen them go head to head six times this year, all in finals. Overall, they are 21 wins even, so with the prospect of at least one if not two encounters (as the form book would strongly suggest), who will nudge ahead by year end?

Nishikori may fancy his chances against Djokovic in the group stages, trailing just 2-4 against the World No. 1, but Berdych faces a bit of a mountain, trailing all three, although it has been quite some time since he played Nishikori.

We predict Djokovic and Federer to emerge from the group to the semi-final stages.

Ile Nastase plays host (perhaps without the uniform) to the World No. 2 Murray, who has been obviously training on clay ahead of the World Tour Finals, with a once in a lifetime opportunity to lift the Davis Cup. But he looked to be in form as he has a tough group, but not an insurmountable one. While he might feel he has an edge having beaten David Ferrer in in the Paris Masters semi-final, Wawrinka is the man to fear. No, not because of those picnic table shorts, which have thankfully been retired, or they might be flying atop the Matterhorn by know – who knows?!

His biggest headache will be Nadal – still with a losing record against the Spaniard, who is finding some form now at the end of the season. We all know he doesn’t like being indoors for the season ending, he has been twice a finalist and although we think the groups are actually well balanced this year, this is a tough call for Murray, and his fans! He could go deep, but with Wawrinka’s late turn of speed (if we turn a sneaky blind eye to his first round uncoupling in Basel!). Murray could be on the end of a 1-2 but…remember, the Chick was in Singapore and we all know what happened there!

We predict Wawrinka and Nadal to top the group.

So what’s next for the Global Chick? She’s updating her Oyster Card and she’s primed and ready for THE tennis season finale! See you on Sunday!

Topics: Barclays ATP World Tour, global chick, London, Sports, Tennis News

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Theodore2023 says:

November 12, 2015 at 8:31 pm

RT @TennisNewsOne: CHAMPAGNE, SHENANIGANS AND THE BARCLAYS ATP WORLD TENNIS TOUR FINALS DRAW, LIVE(ISH) FROM LONDON BY GL… https://t.co/L…