Marin Cilic might feel like he’s playing himself again and again and again this week at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2017 in Tokyo. The top seed is slated to meet a number of players whom, like Cilic, prefer to serve big and dictate play immediately after the first ball.

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The 6’6” Croatian, who will be going for his second title of the season (Istanbul), opens against a qualifier but could face 6’8” Kevin Anderson in the quarter-finals. The South African is coming off his maiden Grand Slam final at the US Open earlier this month (l. to Nadal).

Anderson, like Cilic, will also be looking to strengthen his spot in the Emirates ATP Race To London, which determines the Top 8 who play at the Nitto ATP Finals, to be held 12-19 November at The O2 in London.

The 31-year-old Anderson is currently in 11^th place; Cilic is in seventh place. Fifth-placed Stan Wawrinka and ninth-placed Novak Djokovic have ruled themselves out of the season-ending tournament.

In the semi-finals, if the seeds hold, Cilic could meet 6’5” Milos Raonic, who’s seeded third and is returning after a seven-week absence because of a left wrist injury. The Canadian last played at the Coupe Rogers in Montreal in mid-August. Raonic withdrew from the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 in Cincinnati and the US Open.

Six-foot-six Sam Querrey rounds out the big servers populating the Tokyo draw. The sixth seed opens against French veteran Richard Gasquet. Fourth seed David Goffin, eighth seed Diego Schwartzman and second seed Dominic Thiem are the other seeds in the bottom half.

Goffin is playing Alexandr Dolgopolov in the Shenzhen Open final on Sunday. Thiem faces Steve Johnson of the U.S. in the first round and will look to rebound after losing his Chengdu opener to Argentina’s Guido Pella earlier this week.

World No. 1 Rafael Nadal could face No. 4 Alexander Zverev in what would be a can’t-miss China Open final in Beijing next weekend. The top-seeded Spaniard is returning to tour-level action this week for the first time since winning his third US Open earlier this month.

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He and Zverev have faced off three times in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series, with Nadal taking their trio of tangles, including a five-setter at the Australian Open earlier this year in which Zverev led two sets to one.

But that’s not to say Nadal or Zverev has an easy path to the ATP World Tour 500 title match. The 31-year-old Nadal opens against Frenchman Lucas Pouille, who outlasted the Spaniard the last time they played, during the fourth round of the 2016 US Open. From there, Nadal could face #NextGenATP Russian Karen Khachanov, No. 32 in the Emirates ATP Rankings. Sixth seed John Isner of the U.S. could await in the quarter-finals.

Third seed Grigor Dimitrov, wild card Juan Martin del Potro and fifth seed Roberto Bautista Agut are the favourites to face Nadal in the semi-finals. The Spaniard is going for his second China Open title, his first since 2005 when he beat Argentine Guillermo Coria.

Dimitrov opens against the red-hot Damir Dzumhur, who won his maiden ATP World Tour title in St. Petersburg and reached the semi-finals in Chengdu (l. to Dolgopolov) earlier this month. Del Potro faces Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay, and Bautista Agut will meet Chinese wild card Ze Zhang, who reached his first ATP World Tour quarter-final at the Shenzhen Open.

On the bottom half of the draw, Zverev will try to bounce back from his quarter-final loss against Dzhumur in Shenzhen. The #NextGenATP German is going for his sixth title of the season. He opens against Brit Kyle Edmund and could face seventh seed Tomas Berdych in the quarter-finals, with a semi-final match-up against eighth seed Nick Kyrgios or fourth seed Pablo Carreno Busta looming.

David Goffin advanced to his third final of the season by defeating Henri Laaksonen 7-6(7), 5-7, 6-3 at the Shenzhen Open on Saturday.

After cruising to a straight-sets victory over eighth-seeded Donald Young in the quarter-finals, Goffin was forced to dig deep against the No. 107 Laaksonen.

Goffin clinched the first set in a tie-break, then dropped the second after sailing a forehand wide at 6-5. The second-seeded Belgian immediately broke to open the third and broke again at 5-3 to earn the victory in two hours and 16 minutes.

“I’m feeling a little tired; I’ve never played him before but he’s a tough fighter,” Goffin said. “It was a tough battle, especially in the second set. I’m happy with the way I started the third set but it was a fight until the end.

“I’ve won three matches already in Shenzhen; I’m going to rest tonight to be ready for tomorrow.”

Goffin moves a step closer to his first title of the season. The World No. 12 failed to lift a tournament trophy in his two previous attempts this season. In February, Goffin fell to Grigor Dimitrov at Sofia and to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at Rotterdam.

Laaksonen, the Swiss No. 3 behind Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka, was playing in his third straight three-set match and his first ATP World Tour semi-final.

In the previous round, Laaksonen outlasted Chinese qualifier Zhizhen Zhang 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 in two hours and five minutes. In the Round of 16, the 25 year old battled from a set down to rally past Marius Copil 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.

Marcos Baghdatis had to win two matches in one day on Saturday at the Chengdu Open but the Cypriot pulled it off and now, he’ll earn his reward: a chance to win his first ATP World Tour title since Sydney 2010.

The 32-year-old Baghdatis won the final game of his Chengdu quarter-final, beating Chinese Taipei’s Yen-Hsun Lu 6-3, 6-2 to reach his third semi-final of the season.

Later in the day, Baghdatis returned to take on Argentina’s Guido Pella, who had not dropped a set all tournament and had upset top seed Dominic Thiem in the second round. But Baghdatis hit 12 aces and lost his serve only once in the final two sets to advance past Pella 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 in just over two hours.

“I feel great because I think I kept a very good level throughout the match,” Baghdatis said. “I’m pretty happy I am improving and finding my movement back and my energy on court and keeping it for two hours.”

The veteran Baghdatis will be playing in his 14^th tour-level final and his first since February 2016 (Dubai, l. to Wawrinka). He will face Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin, who reached his fourth tour-level final by knocking out fifth seed Yuichi Sugita 6-2, 6-7(4), 6-0.

Istomin won almost 80 per cent of his first-serve points to beat Sugita, the lone remaining seed in the draw. “I’m really happy with my serve this tournament. I was working a lot on my serve,” said Istomin, who finished with 11 aces on Saturday.  

“I’m just trying to bring my best tennis,” Istomin said. “It’s going to be tricky. I just go on court and try to do my best.”

Former Top 20 American Vince Spadea had already managed to parlay success on the tennis court into success in the business world. But his star is truly on the rise after his pivotal role in ‘Battle Of The Sexes,’ Hollywood’s take on the 1973 epic showdown between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

In addition to his role as advisor to Oscar winner Emma Stone, who plays Billie Jean King, and actor/producer Steve Carell, who plays Bobby Riggs, Spadea also doubled as Riggs during on-court scenes. During one such scene, Spadea traded shots with Stone’s stunt double dressed as Riggs one minute, and fed balls to Stone in ball boy attire the next.

“There was a scene where the ball boy wasn’t getting the ball toss right; his rhythm was off,” Spadea said. “At Emma’s request, I stood in for the shot. “I had to get dressed up as the ball boy and throw her the ball.”

During his lengthy career (1993-2011), Spadea gained attention both on the court – 311 wins, a career-high ranking of 18, the 2004 Scottsdale title, 21 Top 10 wins, including over Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick – and off the court, as one of the game’s most colourful personalities. He dabbled in rapping, coining the phrase, ‘Spadea, I’m not afraid of ya’. So it should come as little surprise that the 43-year-old now finds himself in Hollywood.

Apart from that, Spadea stuck to his main job: to prepare Stone for her role as King before filming got underway. To do so, Spadea, an 18-year-veteran of the ATP Tour, studied tape of the match in order to pick up the nuances of King’s style and game, and to get a feel for the milestone event in general. Stone, who won the Academy Award for “Best Actress in a Leading Role” for her performance in 2016’s “La La Land,” was quick to pick up King’s mannerisms and overall on-court demeanor.

“I worked with Emma on things like King’s walk, where she put her head, rested her racquet during that match,” Spadea said. “We also worked on her grip and stroke production: her rotation, stance, swing and follow-through technique.

“It really was an artistic project. Emma was a super-hard worker and a great student. She transitioned into King quickly. You could see the differences from the first week to the fourth, sixth through the eighth, 10th to the 12th. It was great to synchronise [Stone’s] body; she doubled as King.”

During one of their training sessions, King dropped by to provide feedback and a few pointers.

“King wasn’t on set, but we did work together one time before production started,” Spadea said. “She demonstrated some technical things; the ball toss, where her eyes were on the ball, her slice [backhand]. She felt [Stone and I] worked well together and was happy with how things were turning out.”

Spadea was also instrumental in getting Carell into tennis form. With Spadea also serving as his understudy’s stunt double for some on-court scenes, the player paid visits to Carell’s house to iron out match sequences.

“Carell has a lot of confidence and already had a lot of tennis talent before we met,” Spadea said. “He was all business and we got along great. We practised lobs, slices, a wide range of shots that we’d use during filming.

“The production team wasn’t sure how much of Carell or me they were going to use during the shots of match play, so I had to be Riggs theatrically and work on getting Carell to be Riggs.”

Spadea, who credits his success running his talent agency, Vince Models, based in Beverly Hills, as the reason he was hired for the job, wasn’t restricted to transforming the actors into their tennis counterparts and a Los Angeles movie set into the Houston Astrodome. In addition, his role as “tennis choreographer/technical advisor” meant he was tasked with replicating the atmosphere and ambiance of the event.

“We paid a lot of attention to detail,” Spadea said. “I had some third party counseling, to get the right umpire, the right crowd, the right attire, to make it all look authentic. We had to find the same court surface, the same material that was used during that match, things like that.

“We found some private locations to work on scenes to get the feeling right. We wanted everything to be relevant, from where the umpires were standing to how they were standing.”

Besides the aesthetics, the velocity of the game itself has changed over the 40-plus years since the “Battle of the Sexes” showdown. Spadea analysed those aspects to give the on-court action scenes the perfect fit and feel.

“We had to assess how the players hit, served and moved,” Spadea said. “How big were their biggest shots? Hardest serves? We had to calibrate all of that. Obviously, we had to slow things down a bit, pull back a little bit, to replicate the times since the movie is set in 1973. Don’t get me wrong, Billie Jean hit hard, and Bobby played with some finesse; he was very fast. We had to take all that into account.”

In the 40 days Spadea was involved in shooting, work hours often stretched from early morning into the late evening. During that time, the player made friends and enjoyed some lighthearted moments, both on and off the set.

“I mingled with the actors during the shooting and I went to one of Emma’s charity events,” Spadea said. “It isn’t often you get to work with Oscar-winning talent, and my years of experience as a tennis pro was embraced by the Hollywood set.

“I ran into some of the cast at a preview of the movie in Los Angeles. That was interesting. You make a movie and it doesn’t come out until a year and a half later, but it was nice to see everyone again.”

Vince Spadea in action on set, standing in for actor Steve Carell. Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/FOX Searchlight