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Old 10-25-2016, 02:45 PM   #540
Brian Swartz
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: May 2006
Race to the World Tour Finals
Post-Wimbledon Edition

This is always one of my favorite times of the year, and it's particularly interesting this season; with the shakeup in the rankings, young players rising, there could be some interesting competition to see who makes the field. Three Slams, and three different champions, and #1 Girsh is not among them.

In

Prakash Mooljee -- 8355
Tomas Niklas -- 4975
Gustavo Caratti -- 4630*

Caratti's in by virtue of the RG title of course, ditto for Niklas and Wimbledon. I admit I did not expect Niklas, for all of his success this year, to be all the way up at second on the season. So far on the whole, it truly is Mooljee in one tier, and everyone else in a second ... three players within less than 400 points for the #2 spot at this stage. Fascinating.

Probable

Antonin Iglar -- 4610
Girish Girsh -- 4180
Anil Mehul -- 3540

I don't think the #1 player in the rankings has ever not been assured of a spot by this point in the season, but frankly Girsh isn't even close to being qualified yet. I have no doubt he'll get there, but there's still much work to do. More concerning is that he's currently fifth overall to this point. He'll move up from there I think, but he definitely needs a strong finish to the season. Meanwhile, Mehul's biggest concern really shouldn't be Caratti based on this: he's in real danger of not qualifying without a good second half.

Contenders

Mugur Kinczllers -- 3300
Shreya Ujjaval -- 3230
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Long Shots

Agustin Herrera -- 2790
Theodore Bourdet -- 2710
Juan de los Santos -- 2320
Khasan Zakirov -- 2240

Highlighting the poor year so far of the French players, Davide Poilblan isn't even in contention at this point. Ujjaval and Kinczllers have more points than the last couple of players usually have at this stage, meaning that most of the field hasn't been able to keep up with the more competitive top players. There's aren't nearly as many pretenders as usual. How strange is the year that Juan de los Santos is having? Well, he's the only guy I've ever seen on this list who still has challengers among his top results.

Going forward, this figures to be less compelling than I expected. It seems to be more the case that the top players have really separated themselves, lots of players basically out of it already with only 1500 points or so on the year. Bourdet is the only one with a real chance I think, if he can hang around and then make a late-season charge on the indoor courts.
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