WTF?

by Pete Bodo

World No. 53 Guillermo Garcia-Lopez wins the Thailand Open—only the second title of his career—after sending shock waves through the tennis world with an upset of Rafael Nadal in the semifinals. The top stars of the WTA take a pass on the fall journey to Asia; the allure of neither stir-fried noodles, yen, nor ranking points is strong enough motivate them to pack their bags and sticks. In Malaysia, Mikhail Youzhny rallies all that considerable talent and determination—neither of which jumps out at you for most of the year—and bags a title after a two-and-a-half hour battle with Andrey Golubev, 7-6 (3) in the third set.

Hey, it's fall tennis, right? The next thing you know, David Nalbandian will be taking Roger Federer to the woodshed, Marcos Baghdatis will win a title, Caroline Wozniacki will become No. 1 and some French dude not named Monfils will win one the most enduring and significant of indoor tennis fixtures, the Paris Indoors (now re-named with the typically poetic cadence that only a good marketing guy can conceive: the BNP Paribas Masters). There will be none of that "I love Paris in the springtime" business for me. Being in Paris in early November is enough to make me want to fling yourself into the Seine, taking precautions to make sure I don't crash through the glass roof one of one of those tourist dining barges that plies the murky waters. Did I say Happy Halloween?

Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. The name sounds so absurdly Spanish that I'm beginning to have my doubts. Any chance this kid is Robin Soderling's talented kid brother, laboring under an assumed name?

Oh, there's other stuff. How about Feliciano Lopez sending Juan Martin del Potro's post-Australian Open record for 2010 to 0-2? Watch out, Vince Spadea! (Spadea holds the record for most consecutive tour-level first round losses, with 21).

Relax, I'm kidding. Everyone knows that it's going to take Delpo, the 2009 U.S. Open champion, a few months to find his form. I wouldn't take any of his results seriously until the beginning of 2011. However, let's remember the role that confidence and momentum play in tennis. It can be extraordinary, especially for the young. Wasn't that same losing machine Spadea ranked as high as No. 18 at on time? Will Garcia-Lopez ever get to be No. 18? You can't take anything for granted in this game.

As we move on in the fall, I expect Andy Murray to pop back into the fray. It would seem, well, consistent with his modus operandi to win a few of the bigger fall events, take down a Novak Djokovic here or a Nadal there, and maybe even win the Barclays ATP Tour World Final. Would anyone be surprised if that happened? We have yet to hear from Mr. Djokovic, but it's early in this fall mini-season.

My feeling, though, is that his priority is going to be a successful Davis Cup final, and the Serbs are well-positioned to win it. They'll host France in Belgrade, on a surface that probably will be identical to the indoor hard-court used the previous week at the the unfortunately acronymed Barclays "WTF," or World Tour Final. The Davis Cup final takes place the week after the WTF, and Novak Djokovic and Nenad Zimonjic are likely to be traveling straight from London to Belgrade, with plenty of match experience on the surface.

Federer is penciled in to start his fall season at the Shanghai Rolex Masters a week from now, and he's playing pretty much straight through to the very end, the WTF in London. His archrival, Rafa Nadal, is playing this week in Tokyo, but could meet Federer in Shanghai soon therafter. But at the end of the Asian swing, Nadal is cooling his jets until the Paris Indoors, and taking the following week off, presumably to prepare for the WTF.

It's absurd to talk about holes in Rafa's record, but inevitably his performance in the annual year-end championships will be examined in any assessment of his overall record. Critics already note that he has yet to win a YEC, while his frenemy The Mighty Fed has won four of them. (Did James Blake really make the WTF in 2006? I'll bet he'd love to have that one back to play again. Or maybe not, given that at the time Federer was at the peak of his powers, and allowed lake just seven games in three sets.) Why be a glutton for punishment?

In any event, it may surprise some of you that while Federer's personal W-L record in the YEC is an outstanding 4-4, Nadal has appeared in the finals on only three occasions. In his first two, he lost in the semifinals, both times to Federer. Last year, while working his way back from knee injury, he lost all three of his round-robin matches and was long gone before the knockout semifinals. It isn't so much that Nadal has a poor record in YECs—it's more like he has an inconclusive one. There isn't a man alive or dead who could be found wanting after losing to Federer in those two years when Rafa went deep in the YEC, 2006 and 2007.

Rafa is a different player now than the one who suffered those two consecutive semifinal losses. It used to be Nadal in Federer's rear-view mirror; now they've changed places. But this will be a great opportunity for Federer to ambush Nadal, and extract a little payback for all the grief Nadal has put him through recently. Nothing like ending the year with the sweet taste of revenge in your mouth, even if doesn't much alter the big picture when it comes to the year-end ranking, or even the history books.

A defensive Nadalite could easily make light of the importance of the YEC. And while the event has never quite recaptured the aura it had back in some of those glory years, either in New York (going way back) or later, in Frankfurt, Germany, it's still a blue-chip resume item. Most importantly, the very best players have often played their very best at the YEC.

Pete Sampras and Ivan Lendl won the YEC five times apiece to lead all players (the YEC is a relatively new concept, first played in Year 2 of the new "Open" era, 1970). Ilie Nastase and Federer have each won it four times. The only other player to win the YEC more than twice was John McEnroe, who triumphed three times. Up until 1998, which could be called the glory years for the YEC, the only players who managed to win the event were also Grand Slam champions. And among them, only one—Michael Stich—finished his career with just one major.

But since 1998, three men who never did, or haven't yet, won a major have taken the YEC: Alex Corretja (1998), David Nalbandian (2005) and the defending champion, NIkolay Davydenko. Are we witnessing a gradual devaluation of the WTF, and if so, is it really all that important for Nadal to win the tournament at least once? The answers are, respectively, maybe and yes. The YEC lost a bit of its cache when it moved out of the major western media markets, but it's being rehabilitated in London. And it's important for Nadal to win the YEC at least once. A player needs to check off lots of boxes on his march to an exalted place in tennis history. I think Nadal understands that.

If I were Davydenko, I would be worried—very worried. Except for this: the defending champion is nowhere to be seen and unlikely to qualify for the event. Which is, of course, both a little weird and critical to the entire concept of a year-end playoff among the best players. Put it down as another aspect of the fall tennis season, a topsy-turvy period that could only appear less disorderly if, say, Federer met Nadal in the World Tour Finals.

It could happen, but the way things have been going, I'm not sure I'd bet on it.