[Brian Swartz]

This year's Race to the World Tour Finals ended up having the most dramatic conclusion I've ever seen. It would hardly even be possible for it to be more so. The two-man competition between Luc Janin and Tiosav Srbulovic was tossed aside when Mateo Kaspar won the Vienna 500, putting him in 8th heading into the Paris Masters. That meant that unless Santos lost really early, it would come down to who went further in Paris: Kaspar or Janin.

Apparently neither one of them wanted to miss out. Each of them cut a swath through the top players in the world. Kaspar knocked off Girsh, then Mooljee on the top half; Janin beat #3 Browne, then outlasted #2 Tomas Niklas 11-9 in an epic third-set tiebreaker. That set the stage for a final between the two, winner to make the WTF and the loser to be probably the best player ever to miss it. Kaspar won 7-6(5), 6-3, though it wasn't quite that close, and goes from being third man out three weeks before to 7th position for his first-ever Finals. As strange as it seems, Janin has still not made the field yet in his career, even though he's spent much of the last two years in the Top 10. Here's the standings going in:

Prakash Mooljee -- 13,760
Tomas Niklas -- 8865
Johnny Browne -- 5870
Gillo Fangio -- 5250
Khasan Zakirov -- 4980
Girish Girsh -- 4845
Mateo Kaspar -- 4800
Juan de los Santos -- 4295
-----------------------------
Luc Janin -- 4120

Having nine players at over 4k points is rather amazing. I've never seen anything close that before. Fangio, Kaspar, and Santos will all be making their debut this year. Meanwhile it's definitely the last go-round for Girsh. Mooljee has now failed to win four straight big events in a row. The top two spots are set in stone for this year, but it's increasingly obvious that the youth movement is here, and 4-7 could finish in any order. Obviously everyone's going to be fighting for that #4 spot to get off on the right foot for next season.

Meanwhile Ritwik Dudwadkar played in a tier-2 challenger during Paris, once again reaching the final and once again being soundly defeated once there. He'll have two more challengers to try and push himself as close to the Top 100 as possible by year's end(139th as of this writing). Anil Mehul has dropped to 28th in singles, and may not be far at all away from switching to a primarily doubles focus. He's up to 82nd there, close to a new career high(77th previously).