It seemed, for a short time at least, that the ATP had finally made the fall schedule work in 2012. The season was over at a reasonable point in mid-November. The top players were fresh enough to make the trip to the Masters in Shanghai. And complaints about over-work were few and far between. But there was still one catch: The three-week triple-header to close it out in Basel, Paris, and London, a daunting slog that had been created to get the season done and dusted as quickly as possible. How were the top guys going to survive it?
Now we know. Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray skipped the first leg, in Basel, and Roger Federer has now announced, after losing a close final on Sunday, that he’s skipping the second leg, the usually-mandatory event in Paris. That’s not an ideal ending to the year, though even with the traditional week’s break between Paris and London—it was eliminated in 2012—it would have been a tough stretch for any of them.
For now, anyway, those of us on the East Coast of the United States don’t mind the quick transition from Basel to Paris. With Frankenstorm Sandy bearing down on us, we can’t do much besides watch the opening rounds from Bercy. That means a heavy dose of Anderson and Troicki and Granollers and Falla, but it has also yielded an interesting result: Jerzy Janowicz, a 21-year-old from Poland ranked No. 69—beat No. 19 Philipp Kohlschreiber on Monday. Janowicz is 6-foot-8, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way he was backpedaling and lasering his forehand today.
Bercy has begun. Reportedly, the court is a slow one, built to approximate what they’ll lay down in the O2 Arena next week—though I thought the court in London was more famous for being low, as in low-bouncing, than slow. We’ll see how Paris plays. This is also the last chance for players to qualify for the World Tour Finals. Six of the eight spots are locked up. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Janko Tipsarevic are in the lead for the last two, with Richard Gasquet and Nicolas Almagro next in line if they falter—Tsonga is defending finalist points from last year.
So, before the power goes out here in New York, here’s a look ahead at the draw.