October Surprises

“Quiet” may be the best word to describe this fall so far. The races for No. 1 ended in September, when Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic locked up their tours’ respective top spots. The marquee end-of-year events in Singapore and London, as well as the Davis Cup and Fed Cup finals, are still a few weeks away. And as for this month’s Asian swing, it happens while most of us in the West are asleep.

Yet the fall does go on, and on the men’s side at least, it can have longer-term ramifications. In recent years, Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Stan Wawrinka have built momentum late in one season that paid off with Grand Slam titles the following season. Here are four thoughts on what we’ve seen—or read about, anyway—in Asia so far, and which player might be building Slam-winning momentum for 2016.

Simon Will Have His Say

The most significant off-court news of the last few weeks has been the transition at the top of the WTA Tour. Stacey Allaster, CEO since 2009, stepped down, and was replaced by Steve Simon, the longtime tournament director at Indian Wells. Simon has obviously had success—with a few billion helping hands from Larry Ellison—in turning that event around, and he seems to be a level-headed salesman and executive.

He’ll have his priorities, but judging from the last three weeks, one of them should be balancing the desire to have a season that ends in October, with the desire to keep expanding in Asia. Those two goals began to collide last year, when the lucrative Premier event in Wuhan was stuffed between another premier event, in Tokyo, and a Premier Mandatory event, in Beijing. This year that too-frenetic schedule has led to exhaustion and, perhaps, injuries. The biggest WTA news of the month so far has been the high number of withdrawals and retirements.

Second-biggest, I should say. The smog in Beijing has generated the most headlines. It has blanketed the city and the tournament facility this week, and forced many fans to wear masks while they watch. That’s not a good look for a sporting event or its sponsors, not a healthy situation for the players, and one more factor that Simon, as well as ATP chief Chris Kermode, should consider when they make their plans for Asia in the future.

Sam He Still Is

Who’s made the biggest late-season turnaround in tennis? Right now the award has to go to coach Sam Sumyk. He spent the first half of 2015 guiding Eugenie Bouchard, as well as his own good reputation, through a precipitous decline. But the pro-tour coaching world is called a carousel, rather than a swan-dive, for a reason. Sumyk has found work again with Garbiñe Muguruza, and he has made the most of her lifeline. So far this month, the Spanish woman has dug herself out of a post-Wimbledon slump to reach the final in Wuhan and the semis in Beijing. That surge earned the 22-year-old her first trip to the year-end championships in Singapore.

Along the way, Muguruza has played perhaps the best tennis I’ve seen from her. She has always had point-ending power, but the last two weeks she has combined pace with consistency and depth in a way that few of her colleagues can. The next step is to find some feel on her volleys; on big points, she often puts herself in a winning position, only to have the closing volley become an adventure—at net she tends to slam the ball, rather than punching it. Whatever happens the rest of the way in 2015, though, the Wimbledon runner-up has made herself an early threat to take the next step and win a major in 2016.

Time (Not) to Say Uncle?

Rafael Nadal, despite many portents of doom, has reached the semifinals in Beijing. There he’ll get yet another shot at Fabio Fognini, the Italian who has beaten him three times in 2015.

Earlier in the week, many of us were surprised to learn that Toni Nadal, Rafa’s uncle and coach, said that a new voice in the Nadal camp may be necessary if his nephew doesn’t turn things around next year. It’s hard to imagine Rafa without the man who introduced him to the game when he was 4 years old, and has coached him ever since. With 14 major titles together, they’ve had the most successful mentor-player relationship in tennis history. By now they’re more than family; when it comes to tennis, they share a brain.

But can you teach an old brain to have new thoughts? It had never entered my own mind that Rafa could use a new voice until this week. We know he has lacked confidence this year, and has struggled to play well with a lead. But in Beijing, while he has been winning, his game has looked relatively ordinary. He’s hitting the same shots, and using the same baseline patterns, but not to the same imposing effect that he once did.

Is he just getting older? Is the game evolving? Those two things are inevitable. Or can he, as Toni maintains, rise again with his old game? History says yes. But the recent history of tennis also says that change is good, even for veterans in their 30s. Rafa need only look at Federer’s work with Stefan Edberg, and Serena’s work with Patrick Mouratoglou, to know that you can teach an old champ new tricks.

Peak Nole?

We may have reached it. Djokovic is in the semis in Beijing. He is now 27-0 at that event, and has won 23 straight sets there. He has amassed 15,645 ranking points, which puts him 6,200 ahead of Federer at No. 2—those are both unprecedented totals. And yesterday Djokovic put on one of his all-time return-of-serve clinics against John Isner. He broke the usually unbreakable American four times, held him to three aces, and won 50 percent of the points on Isner’s serve. He lost just nine points on his own serve.

“Today was a great match,” Djokovic said. No other answer was possible.

We’ll see if Djokovic can fly even higher in the future. Either way, this is a moment in his career to savor.