[Brian Swartz]

October

A couple updates to get caught up on. I forgot to include the conclusion of Shanghai, in which Benda took possession of the driver's seat for year-end #1 by winning tight matches against Almagro and Elder to take his first big title off of clay. Meanwhile, Iglar was a shocking third-round upset, ending his run of hardcourt dominance for the moment.

Mehul headed off to the Valencia Open(500) in Spain the week before Paris, and got himself through a tight final-set tiebreak against Isaac Malpica(10-8) before losing to David Prieto 7-5, 7-6(2) in the semifinals. Objectively he's better than Prieto but he's overplayed to get set up for the offseason as mentioned.

Prakash Mooljee went off to a Tier-4 in Nova Gorica(Slovenia), and I was shocked that he wasn't seeded there! Junior events are so much harder to predict but there were a lot more top players at this one. He was smacked down 6-3, 6-0 in the first round although he did make the semis in doubles. Still, one thing that is becoming obvious is that I still have some to learn about training juniors players and getting them into the right events.


Paris Masters

For Anil Mehul, it was an unexpected and even undesired success here. Singles went as you might expect for a tired player, although he coincidentally had the same matchups as in Shanghai. First-round bye, beat Malpica easily this time(2 & 0!) and then lost to Prieto in the third round, again in straight sets. But in doubles, he qualified ... and just kept winning, knocking out the first and seventh-seeded teams along with partner Hugo Sanchez(MEX) en route to the semifinals! At most I figured a first-round loss, if he got through qualifying. It's better than the alternative of underplaying, but he's now really tired and will suffer a bit for it in his first week of the off-season which begins now. He moves up to a personal and Sri Lanka historical best 100th in doubles, fairly irrelevant but there it is. It looks like he'll finish the year at a career-high 12th in singles, with a 52-20 mark on the year(last season was 37-17 against somewhat diminished competition). He's turned the corner, and will now spend the next several weeks preparing for a determined charge against the best in the world next year.

At the business end of things, Bjorn Benda ran the table once again and you can pretty much pencil him in now as the #1 to end 2039. Iglar in the quarters gave him a battle and Goncharenko in the final pushed him to three sets, but with back-to-back Masters crowns off his favored clay, Benda pushes his total to four Masters shields, all this year, and has shown he has enough of a well-rounded game to be a force anywhere. The gauntlet has been laid down, and from the chaotic competition of the last few months a clear champion has emerged. The German is a step above all comers right now.


World Tour Finals Preview

So in three weeks time the best will meet to confirm Bjorn Benda as champion. He has a lead of well over a thousand points now, and the only way he doesn't finish the year on top is if he loses all his matches and David Prieto wins all of his and takes the title. Prieto has only made it out of group play here once(he won it three years ago) and didn't take a single match last year. That just plain isn't going to happen.

Perry Hogue's moment in the sun appears to have lasted about a year, he's faded the last few months and the general consensus is that it was the best the tennis world will ever see from him. As last year's runner-up, he has to do well to even maintain contact with the other top players. The stakes are even higher for Gabriel Alastra, who after being #1 the last three years and taking the title here last year, will enter play seventh in the field. While his counterparts Prieto, Elder, and Almagro are still here as well, this is the last hurrah for them as a major force. The sun is setting.

Benda and Hogue will be joined by first-timer Viktor Goncharenko as a third member of what is now ostensibly the ruling class, though it'd be more accurate to say Benda rules over a hodgepodge as Goncharenko has been inconsistent since Wimbledon and Hogue is apparently on the decline now. Antonin Iglar, just past his 23rd birthday, will look to make a statement as he represents the next generation that is increasingly making it's presence felt.

The main drama here will be in how 2-4(Prieto/Elder/Hogue) and 5-7(Goncharenko/Iglar/Alastra) shake out. Anybody in the second trio could move up a few spots with a great performance, but it really all boils down to the fact that everyone's chasing Benda.

With Goncharenko and Iglar joining, two players from last year will not be returning. Spasoje Kucerovic has given up the singles game to focus on doubles as of late in the year, tumbling well out of the Top 10. Far more disappointing is the case of Evgeni Topolski. The Russian, barely 26, finishes the year just out of the field and really should be in it -- he's been a major disappointment this season and unquestionably a waste. 2039 and 2040 should be his best two years, the peak of his abilities, and it's clear that without a major recommitment to the game he'll have to be regarded as an underachiever. .