Emirates ATP Race To London Explained
Emirates ATP Race To London Explained
Get to know the difference between the Emirates ATP Race To London and the Emirates ATP Rankings
It’s that time of the year again when the attention of the tennis world begins to focus on who will qualify for the season-ending Barclays ATP World Tour Finals.
Only this year’s best eight singles players and doubles teams will qualify to compete for one of the greatest prizes in our sport. London’s iconic O2 arena will again play host to the world’s biggest indoor tennis event from November 13-20.
Players earn their place at the season finale by finishing in the Top 8 of the Emirates ATP Race To London on November 6, when the ATP World Tour regular season concludes after the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris. The Race is a calendar-year points race that starts at the beginning of each season in the first week of January. The players who win titles in Brisbane, Chennai and Doha typically will share the Race lead after the first week of the season.
Throughout the season a player adds his best eligible results from up to 18 tournaments to his Race points tally. Winning a prestigious ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title earns the champion 1000 points. Titles at ATP World Tour 500 and 250 level tournaments return 500 points and 250 points respectively. Players who don’t win the title still earn points based on how far they advance in the draw.
The Race differs from the Emirates ATP Rankings, the historical world rankings. A player’s ranking is determined by his best 18 tournament results over the preceding 52 weeks. A high ranking is needed to get into the world’s best tournaments and rankings also determine if a player is seeded. Novak Djokovic is known as the World No. 1 because he sits atop the rankings. Milos Raonic is known as a Top 10 player because he is No. 7 in the rankings.
More often than not, a player’s Race standing is different to his ranking. For example, Gael Monfils is sixth in the Race but eighth in the Rankings because he has enjoyed relatively more success in 2016 than over the longer time period of the past 52 weeks. Rafael Nadal is eighth in the Race but fourth in the Rankings because his strong post-US Open results from 2015 only count towards his 52-week ranking and not his 2016 Race standing.
In the latter part of the season, a player’s focus turns to his position in the Race because it becomes an accurate predictor of what the player’s year-end ranking will be. And, of course, the Race determines who makes it to London.
Djokovic, Andy Murray and newly minted US Open champion Stan Wawrinka are the three players who have already booked their spots at The O2. Milos Raonic and Kei Nishikori are highly likely to return to London as both already have more points than the 4,035 points earned by Nishikori last year to clinch the final spot.
In sixth and seventh places respectively in the Race, French showman Monfils and 23-year-old Austrian Dominic Thiem both have a strong chance to make their debuts at the season finale. Thiem is just five points clear of Rafa Nadal, but 675 points clear of ninth-placed Czech Tomas Berdych, who missed the US Open due to appendicitis, and 805 points ahead of 10th-placed Marin Cilic, a recent winner of the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament in Cincinnati.
Thiem boosted his London hopes with a fourth-round showing at the US Open, where he said reaching the season finale was a strong goal. “It would be an unbelievable bonus to an incredible season that I’m having,” he said. “One or two years ago, the [Barclays ATP World Tour] Finals seemed so far away. I didn’t know how to amass that many points in one year and now I’m really in the race to it… If I make it, I would be unbelievably happy… I watch it every year and it’s a great tournament.”
Can Berdych, Cilic, David Goffin or possibly even Nick Kyrgios and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga make a late bid to break into the Top 8 in the final seven weeks of the season? With 13 tournaments – including two Masters 1000 and four 500s – there are enough points on offer. But each tournament will take on extra significance for the chasing pack as they try to catch the leaders.
In doubles, four teams have booked their spots. No. 2 team Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares qualified en route to winning their second major of the year at the US Open and look set to battle Race leaders Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut for year-end No. 1 honours. The Bryan brothers will be back chasing a fifth title and Spaniards Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez also qualified in New York. Defending champions and 2015 year-end No. 1 team Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau are in ninth position, just 30 points behind Henri Kontinen and John Peers.
Editor’s notes: Strictly speaking, the Race begins in mid November of the preceding season (the week after the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris). Results at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals are excluded, but players competing in late-season ATP Challenger Tour events earn points that count towards the next season’s Emirates ATP Race To London.
Officially, only the Top 7 in the Race are guaranteed places at the season finale. The eighth place is reserved for a Grand Slam champion positioned between 8th and 20th in the Race. Wawrinka, who mathematically is not yet guaranteed to finish in the Top 7 in this year’s Race, qualified for London by winning the US Open. That made him a current-year Grand Slam champion who mathematically cannot fall outside the Top 20 in the Race. If all Grand Slam champions of the current year are positioned in the Top 8 of the Race after Paris, then the Top 8 players in the Race qualify.