ATP TENNIS ASIAN SWING BEGINS STRETCH RUN TO LONDON FINALS • FIVE SPOTS STILL UP FOR GRABS

Written by: Staff on 26th September 2018

ATP TENNIS ASIAN SWING BEGINS STRETCH RUN TO LONDON FINALS • FIVE SPOTS STILL UP FOR GRABS |

Photo by @ATPShenzhenOpen via Twitter

By Ricky Dimon

Including this week’s 250-point events in Shenzhen and Chengdu, only six weeks and 11 tournaments remain until the year-end championships in London. With five of the eight spots still in play, the race to the Nitto ATP Finals is heating up.

Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic have already clinched their spots at the O2 Arena. Juan Martin Del Potro is next in line, less than 100 ranking points away from mathematically guaranteeing his place in London. Alexander Zverev is a virtual lock at No. 5 in the 2018 race, while Marin Cilic, Dominic Thiem, and Kevin Anderson are also currently in position for berths but still have some work to do.

John Isner finds himself at ninth in the race right now, but he is skipping the Asian swing after his wife gave birth to their first child earlier in September. As such, it is Kei Nishikori who has the best chance of displacing either Cilic, Thiem, or Anderson. David Goffin, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Pablo Carreno Busta, Milos Raonic, Borna Coric, Grigor Dimitrov, Marco Cecchinato, Diego Schwartzman, and Kyle Edmund are also in the mathematical discussion, but they would have to make major moves over the coming weeks.

Based on current form (Djokovic is the reigning Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion) and past history at the year-end championship (he is a five-time champion, including four winners’ trophies in London), the Serb has to be considered the favorite right now to triumph at the O2 Arena in mid-November. Federer may be the second favorite, with Nadal trailing those two all-time greats because he has never won the prestigious year-end event.

Goffin, Tsitsipas, and Coric are all playing this week in Shenzhen as they hope to add as many as 250 points to their 2018 totals, although Tsitsipas is already out with a second-round loss to Pierre-Hugues Herbert. Fognini, meanwhile, is the top seed in Chengdu.

Following these 250-point tournaments, the Asian swing will ratchet up in both importance and prestige–giving players the chance to do some serious shuffling in the race to London with 500-pointers in Beijing and Tokyo followed by a Masters 1000 event in Shanghai. A jam-packed month of October also features 500s in Basel and Vienna plus the end of the proverbial regular season with the Masters in Paris Bercy.