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World Tour Finals
Bath, Great Britain
It was a competitive pool stage this year; only Solitris Papadias went winless. It's the fourth appearance here for the Greek no. 2, and it's hard to shake the feeling that it may be his last. Ben Faille was the only player to win all three matches, surprising nobody, and both Cananis and Polychroniadis joined him in the knockout phase. But 4th-ranked Themis Xanthos did not. The theme for the tournament was this:
Will the real Jochen Weigle please stand up? After making a run to the USO final, he seemingly reverted to form in Shanghai and Paris. But here he was once again not content to just show up, rallying from a set down against Papadias and winning over Xanthos in straight sets to advance. It should also be noted that [b]Oleg Urazov[b] was one third-set tiebreaker away from beating Cananis and providing another surprise, as he then would have moved on and the world #2 would have been eliminated.
But back to Weigle; he upset Renke Cananis 6-4, 7-6(6) in the second semifinal, while Faille eliminated Leon Polychroniadis in a competitive first match. Weigle was once again outmatched in the final, 6-3, 6-3, and to his collection of first on the year Faille added the Tour Finals crown in unblemished fashion. Weigle is now knocking on the door of moving up to the Top 4, and whether he is able to add some more consistency in the coming year is an interesting storyline.
Elsewhere ...
Sushant Srivastava didn't have the best outing at an FT2 tournament in Oberstaufen, Germany. A close 11-9 loss in a doubles TB for the final, and a semifinal loss in singles, 6-2, 6-2. As bad as that sounds, his opponent was one of those who shouldn't be there. Aris Alunans of Latvia is a challenger-level player, but focuses more on doubles and for singles regularly gets knocked out early. It appears he only players futures this time of year when there are no bigger events to play, so it was just a wrong place at the wrong time kind of situation.
Girish Raychaudhari plowed easily through a JG5 in Kimberly, South Africa that he didn't really need for rankings but there were high-ranking players in all the available JG4 events. He's past ready for the year to turn so that more openings present themselves at that level.
#1 Germany faces #2 Greece again in the upcoming World Team Cup Finals, and it's now down to a few weeks until we learn our fate for the upcoming year.
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