Defending champion Milos Raonic returns to the St. Petersburg Open this week to defend his title and with an eye on the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, 13-20 November at The O2 in London.

Raonic is currently No. 4 in the Emirates ATP Race To London standings. But the Canadian is trying unseat No. 3 Stan Wawrinka. Raonic currently has 4,420 points, 400 behind Wawrinka’s 4,820. Japanese Kei Nishikori remains close to the No. 3 spot as well. He’s in fifth place, only 105 points behind Raonic.

Who Else Is Ahead Of Raonic? View The Emirates ATP Race To London Standings

“Part of me takes pride in winning this tournament again and there is also an aim to move higher in the [Emirates] ATP Race [To London] as there is a fight for the world’s No. 3 position,” Raonic said during his pre-tournament press conference. “So there is even more motivation for myself.”

(Player positions in the calendar-year Emirates ATP Race To London and the 52-week Emirates ATP Rankings will effectively align on 7 November, when the regular ATP World Tour season concludes after the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris.)

The 25 year old is trying to reach the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals for the second time. He also qualified for the year-end championships in 2014 (l. to Federer, l. to Murray). A title defence in St. Petersburg would considerably help his standing. The St. Petersburg Open champion will receive 250 Emirates ATP Rankings points.

Raonic has successfully defended titles two times in his career. He won his first ATP World Tour title at San Jose in 2011 and defended it in 2012 and 2013. He also has had plenty of success indoors. Five of Raonic’s eight ATP World Tour titles have come on indoor hard courts, including the three San Jose crowns. The St. Petersburg Open will be held this week at the Sibur Arena.

“I had a great experience at this tournament,” he said of his time at the St. Petersburg Open last year. “I think it was fabulously run, and I saw the people involved in the tournament, they really care about it.”

Raonic will have to beat some of the game’s best players if he wants to repeat in St. Pete. The Canadian is the second seed. Opposite him on the top half of the draw awaits Wawrinka, fresh off his US Open title. Another Top 10 player, World No. 9 Tomas Berdych, is the third seed.

“I’m just focused on who I’m going to play,” said Raonic, who will face either Serbian Janko Tipsarevic or 2004 champion Mikhail Youzhny of Russia in the second round.

Raonic will also be going for his second title of the season. He beat Roger Federer to win the Brisbane International presented by Suncorp in January. The Monte-Carlo resident finished runner-up at the BNP Paribas Open, an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament in Indian Wells (l. to Djokovic), the Aegon Championships at The Queen’s Club and at Wimbledon (l. to Murray in both).

But it won’t be all tennis this week for Raonic. Outside the Sibur Arena, he plans to enjoy what else St. Petersburg offers.

“We’re going to St. Isaac’s Cathedral tomorrow, then we also are due to visit the Church of Our Savior On the Spilled Blood, and I’d like to come back to the Hermitage Museum because the last time I was there I had only three hours and just ran through it,” Raonic said. “So I definitely need to commit more time to have a full experience of the Hermitage Museum.”

Don’t let the evenness of 15-15 fool you. It is a statistical green light for the server to play aggressively and employ first-strike tactics to get ahead in the game.

An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis of the current Top 10 players in the Emirates ATP Rankings reveals a positive environment for them to play bigger and seek shorter points by delivering more firepower at the start of the point.

Check Out The Game’s Best Servers In The ATP Stats LEADERBOARDS

Top 10 of the Emirates ATP Rankings: Holding Percentages

Score 15-15, Hold Serve Percentage: 84
The Top 10 players in the Emirates ATP Rankings hold serve 85 per cent of the time, according to Infosys Information Platform. With the score at 15-15, their hold-serve percentage drops only one percentage point, to 84, nearly identical to the opening point of the game.

Fifteen-all delivers a high win percentage that mentally puts the server in the driver’s seat, letting him unleash a few potential tactics, including a bigger first serve down the centre of the court if he’s chasing an ace or a serve out wide in search of a forehand return error.

Score 30-15, Hold Serve Percentage: 93
With relatively little scoreboard pressure on the server at 15-15, the opportunity to stretch the lead to 30-15 is forefront in the tactical plan. If the server reaches 30-15, they will hold serve on average more than nine times out of 10. There is nothing not to like about that scoreboard situation.

Score 15-30, Hold Serve Percentage: 64
A server’s likelihood of holding shifts 29 percentage points when the scoreline changes from 30-15 to 15-30. There is always a statistical consequence of losing a point, but this really isn’t so bad. If the server loses the point at 15-15, he is still likely going to hold serve two out of three times. Proficient servers like Milos Raonic and Roger Federer still manage to hold about 70 per cent of the time from 15-30, while World No. 1 Novak Djokovic holds 67 per cent of the time.

Summary
At 15-15, the server is looking for a shorter point to fully maximise the effects of the first serve, not letting the returner prolong the point into a more even battle. A serve, aggressive serve +1 forehand and a finishing volley is about as good as it gets strategically at this specific point in a game.

World No. 1 Novak Djokovic has coach Boris Becker on his side, but when was the last time the pair competed against each other? And when was the last time the Serbian did something for the first time? Djokovic reveals this and more in an exclusive interview for ATP World Tour Uncovered presented by Peugeot.